Mechanicsville

Mechanicsville has witnessed a great deal of change in its more than 140-year history and has been home to several of Atlanta's religious, business, and governmental leaders. Formed alongside the rail yard and locomotive repair shop for the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway, the neighborhood was home to the men responsible for the maintenance of the rail lines and locomotives. Because the neighborhood was home to "mechanics," it soon became known as Mechanicsville.

Mechanicsville became home to Atlanta's earliest Jewish residents when Jacob Haas and Henry Levi opened a dry goods store and settled in the northern edge of Mechanicsville in 1860. The neighborhood's Jewish community grew rapidly and began to comprise a substantial portion of Atlanta's Jewish population. By 1880, there were more than 600 Jewish residents in Mechanicsville. The neighborhood became home to the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Synagogue which attracted increasing numbers of Jews. In 1902, "The Temple" was built replacing the earlier Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Synagogue. Mechanicsville boasted two-thirds of Atlanta's Jewish population by 1911. In 1870, Mechanicsville residents were made up of an ethnically, economically, and religiously diverse group of people, including African Americans, Russians, Germans and other Europeans. In the early 1870s, the growing African-American population formed two religious congregations-Saint Paul's African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Zion Hill Baptist Church.

Because of its location close to the downtown business district and the availability of land, Mechanicsville was home to many of Atlanta's upper and middle class families around the turn of the century, including Amos Rhodes, J.J. Haverty, and the Rich family. According to a neighborhood history written by NPU-V President Peggy Harper, middle-income African Americans also called the neighborhood home. In 1873, a black brick mason in Mechanicsville was listed as owning $1,200 in property and in 1885 a black carpenter living in the neighborhood owned $1,510 in property (substantial amounts at that time). Mechanicsville's residents traveled to downtown and nearby neighborhoods on trolley cars. Being so close to downtown Atlanta, Mechanicsville did not develop any major commercial corridors, but small grocers, laundries, and a coal company were opened to serve local residents. Rapid growth required the establishment of several schools in Mechanicsville's early years. The first, Ira Street School, was built in 1887 to serve 500 students. Three additional schools were built over the next 20 years. The Briscane Ball Park was also built in 1899 as the neighborhood's first recreational area. Today, this recreational area is the Windsor Play Lot.

While the overall population of the neighborhood was quite diverse in the early years, the levels of segregation varied inside the neighborhood. The northeastern section of the neighborhood was home to wealthy residents and was predominantly white. Early in its history, the western and southern sections of the neighborhood were more integrated and African-American and white families lived next door to each other. By 1900, the neighborhood was becoming more segregated, with each street being either African American or white. Wealthier residents lived in Queen Anne style homes. Middle income residents lived in folk Victorian or Craftsmen styled homes. And servants for the wealthier residents, predominantly African American, frequently lived in small cottages behind their employers' homes.

The railroad remained the largest employer in the Mechanicsville neighborhood for much of its history but, in 1922, General Electric built a factory which employed many neighborhood residents. By the mid 1920s though, Atlanta's residential and business expansion to the North and East led many of Mechanicsville's business leaders to move north as well. Middle income African Americans also moved from Mechanicsville to the west side where historically black colleges and universities were established.

This relocation, followed by the Great Depression, caused negative changes in the neighborhood. Many homes became rental properties and fell into great disrepair. After World War II, home ownership and ethnic diversity fell rapidly and, by 1945, Mechanicsville was predominantly a working class, African-American community. A number of public redevelopment policies subjected Mechanicsville to harm in the name of redevelopment. In 1964, the Atlanta Fulton County Stadium was built just outside of the neighborhood while highway construction on the north and east furthered destruction to the neighborhood's physical resources.

In 1968, a 1,000 unit public housing complex, the McDaniel Glenn Housing Project, was constructed on the western edge of Mechanicsville to house many of the displaced lower income families in the area. In 2005 and 2006, the residents of McDaniel Glenn were relocated as a part of a HOPE VI project and, in 2008, Columbia at Mechanicsville was opened to new and returning residents.

From 1960 to 2000, Mechanicsville lost two-thirds of its population, dropping from 10,530 in 1960 to 3,358 in 2000. Those remaining residents have united as a force to stall the neighborhood's decline. In the 1980s, Mechanicsville residents successfully protested Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transportation Association's (MARTA) attempts to claim public housing property along Interstate 20, a move that would have displaced many low income residents. Because of resident protests, annexes of McDaniel Glen were built throughout the neighborhood, making the housing complex a more integral part of the neighborhood. As Atlanta made its bid to host the 1996 Olympics, Mechanicsville residents united again to protect their neighborhood. They encouraged the city to fund a resident-informed master development plan and formed the Mechanicsville Civic Association to push the plan forward. The SUMMECH Community Development Corporation has converted several blocks of vacant property into Ware Estates, a complex of sixty-nine townhomes.

Anchored in large part by the Dunbar Center, Mechanicsville includes a varied assortment of assets and resources, both old and new. Perhaps because of its proximity to downtown Atlanta and two interstates, the northern half of the neighborhood is comprised of several public and private institutions such as the county's new Romae Powell Juvenile Justice Center and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Separated by the primarily commercial Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard, the south is made up mostly of single family residences.