Grant Park

Grant Park is one of Atlanta's oldest neighborhoods. The district includes a 131-acre green space, a recreational area and the residential neighborhoods surrounding it. Rambling Victorian-era mansions and small cottages, early 20th-century bungalows and many brick paved sidewalks characterize the Grant Park neighborhood.

Grant Park is a nationally recognized historical district, chock full of sites such as Zoo Atlanta, the Cyclorama, and Oakland Cemetery, where local figures such as Margaret Mitchell are buried.  The boundaries are easier to see on the map above than understood from a verbal description. Many of the homes in the area are Craftsman bungalows, although renovated Folk Victorian, English Vernacular Revival, Shotgun/Double Shotgun, and Queen Anne styles can also be seen throughout the neighborhood. Grant Park,  located just minutes from downtown, was torn apart for the construction of I-20, and its success as a neighborhood continues to be challenged by this split.  Residents joined together into a neighborhood association and a conservancy group (focusing on Grant Park itself), and they actively work to reinvigorate the area.

Grant Park, as a neighborhood, began to be populated in the 1890's by upper middle class families. Craftsmen built many of the architecturally distinctive homes you see today. Most of the lots were shallow and narrow with unpaved alleys in the back of the houses, from the days when the city sewerage wagons had to have access to the outhouses.

A restoration trend began in Grant Park in the early 1970's and the neighborhood began to blossom in the late 80s and into the 1990s. Demolition of older homes has largely been halted and new construction seeks to conform to the character of the old neighborhood. During the 1980's, the entire area, both north and south of I-20, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Grant Park today is a mixture of the old and new residents with people of all levels of education, age and racial backgrounds living in the same neighborhood. The park is today visited by more than a million visitors yearly.
Boulevard and Memorial Avenues are the main commercial thoroughfares in the neighborhood. 

The neighborhood association sponsors a home and garden tour each September, which is a great introduction of the variety of home and life styles you will find in this neighborhood.