About

I’ve always been drawn to the parts of Atlanta that don’t quite make sense at first glance.

Certain things catch my eye that, I imagine, most people pass without noticing. An old street ends abruptly, as if it once continued somewhere else. A lone building may outlast everything that once surrounded it; ghost staircases lead to empty lots where the buildings they served have vanished. Fading signs still speak names the city has otherwise forgotten.

These orphaned pieces of the past keep hanging around long after Atlanta has found a way to live without them. On their own, they may seem like little more than urban fragments. Look closer, though, and they can reveal the shape of something the city has otherwise erased.

A fragment rarely tells the whole story. It’s part of a larger tapestry; pull on one of those threads, and it often opens into something much bigger. You may find a neighborhood split in two by a highway, a commercial district slowly hollowed out, or transit expansion plans that stalled while the region sprawled outward.

A lot of the site will deal with streets and transportation, including MARTA’s history, old rail corridors, and roads that were rerouted or removed. Other stories will look at neighborhoods, notable buildings, public spaces, and institutions that helped shape the city. Together, they trace the changing identity of a city that’s always becoming something else.

Cities change, whether anyone is ready for it or not, and every generation leaves something behind. I’m interested in what those changes reveal and what the pieces that remain can still tell us.

After all, the Atlanta of today is already becoming the Atlanta people will remember.