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
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