Welcome to Underground Atlanta!
EARLY HISTORY:
The buildings were built during Atlanta's post-Civil War boom, between 1866 and 1871, when the city's population doubled from 11,000 to 22,000 residents. In 1869, the Georgia Railroad Freight Depot was constructed to replace the one destroyed by Sherman's troops in 1864. The depot, which stands at the entrance of Underground Atlanta, remains the oldest extant building in downtown Atlanta. Besides the train station, the bustling district included hotels, banks, law offices and saloons. An electric streetcar was installed in 1889 to points South and by 1900, the depot was serving 100 trains per day with direct service between Atlanta and New York, Cincinnati, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Augusta, Macon and Columbus.
By 1910, several iron bridges had been built to cross the railroad tracks at Union Street. At the suggestion of Atlanta architect Haralson Bleckley, the bridges were rebuilt in concrete and connected by a linear mall between them. Eventually, Bleckley envisioned public plazas between the bridges, but only one, Plaza Park [later Peachtree Fountains Plaza], was ever built.
As the construction took place in the 1920s, merchants began to move their operations to the second floor of their buildings, and turned the original ground floors storefronts into basements for storage and service. Some of the basements became natural sites of speakeasys and juke joints, with music and illegal drinking a common occurrence.
One of the first mentions of the area is in the opening lines of Bessie Smith's "Atlanta Blues" which documents its importance as an entertainment disctrict:
Down in Atlanta G.A.
Underneath the viaduct one day
Drinking corn and hollerin' hoo-ray
Piano playin' till the break of day
By the end of the 1920s, the street level had been raised up by one-and-a-half stories and a five-block area was completely covered up. For the next forty years, as Atlanta continued to grow, the 12 acre area was effectively abandoned and forgotten.
In 1968 the original storefronts were rediscovered and the district was declared a historic site. Many architectural features from a century earlier had survived intact including decorative brickwork, granite archways, ornate marble, cast-iron pilasters, hand-carved wooden posts and gas streetlamps.
Plans were made to restore and reopen "the city beneath the city" as a retail and enterainment district. On April 8, 1969, "Underground Atlanta" officially opened with new restaurants, bars, nightclubs and music venues installed in the old individual storefronts. At the time, Fulton County was the only county that permitted mixed alcoholic beverages to be served, provided that men wore coats and ties in places that served them. As a result, Underground Atlanta quickly became the center of downtown Atlanta nightlife.
Among the more popular spots in Underground Atlanta were Dante's Down the Hatch, Scarlet O'Hara, The Blarney Stone, The Rustler's Den, The Bank Note and Mulenbrink's Saloon, where Atlanta's Piano Red, under the name Dr. Feelgood and the Interns, played from 1969 to 1979. Other attractions included a souvenir shop owned by governor Lester Maddox and a wax museum. With the old-style architecture lending considerable charm to the district, Underground Atlanta was compared to Bourbon Street in New Orleans. By 1972, its most profitable year, Underground had 3.5 million visitors and $17 million in sales.
Underground Atlanta is a shopping and entertainment district in the Five Points neighborhood of downtown Atlanta, Georgia, United States, near the intersection of the MARTA rail lines. First opened in 1969, it takes advantage of the viaducts built over the city's many railroad tracks to accommodate automobile traffic. Each level has two main halls, still called Upper and Lower Alabama and Pryor Streets.
