Disappearance
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. As this occurred during Prohibition, and given the fact that these "basements" were relatively obscured from the city above, some of the basements became sites for 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 district:
- 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 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 at street level, the 12-acre (49,000 m2) area was effectively abandoned and forgotten.
Read more about this topic: Underground Atlanta