The First Kimball House
Prior to the fair Atlanta lacked suitable accommodations for visitors. On March 29 Kimball purchased the old Atlanta Hotel lot and built "The H. I. Kimball House" at a cost of $675,000. Wallace Putname Reed, an Atlanta historian once declared that it was "equal in all respects to the fifth Avenue Hotel in New York and far superior to anything in the South."
When the hotel was completed, Kimball turned his efforts toward improving the surrounding area. The area of Atlanta bounded by Pryor, Decator, Lloyd, and Alabama streets was home to a decrepit railroad car shed. Another area known as the "Mitchell heir property" was reclaimed by the heirs of Robert Mitchell under protest of the government after the railroads abandoned the land. The city claimed that it had a right to the land since it was originally traded for a different property. Kimball, seeing the detriment to his own property by these other lands, paid the city for the lands and build a new rail depot.
Read more about this topic: Hannibal Kimball
Famous quotes containing the words the first and/or house:
“As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their ocellated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. The House That Jack Built (l. 1–3)