City of Granite | Atlanta Is The Mountain

Atlanta's seal | Wikimedia Commons

The fiery I-85 bridge collapse back in April reminded me of the approaching centennial of the Great Atlanta Fire of 1917 this May 21st and Atlanta’s long-term relationship with fire and its near obsession with making itself “fireproof.” Fire is intimately involved with Atlanta’s creation narrative, which features the phoenix rising from flames and ashes. A conspicuous amount of stone and durable granite also figures in Atlanta’s earliest design and development, and Atlanta is in many ways inextricably linked with that top tourist attraction and problematic Confederate monument in Metro Atlanta — Stone Mountain.

Mike Luckovich's cartoon on April 18, 2017.

"Atlanta From the Ashes" sculpture in Woodruff Park in January 2017

The city’s first fire (surprisingly less devastating than the Great Atlanta Fire) famously occurred during the Siege of Atlanta in November 1864, when General William Tecumseh Sherman and his troops burned down most of the city and other parts of Georgia along his March to the Sea. Then, just nineteen years after Sherman’s searing destruction (thirty-four years before the Great Atlanta Fire), a prominent downtown hotel, The Kimball House, burned down on August 12, 1883 (ironically, that same lot was once occupied by The Atlanta Hotel near the old Union Depot, both turned to cinders by Sherman’s troops). The Kimball House was then rebuilt to be bigger and even more impressive — and, most importantly, it was now touted as “fireproof” — and reopened in April 1885 in grand fashion, only to be demolished in 1959 and reincarnated as a present-day parking deck. It would not be the first or last prominent building in the city of Atlanta to be gutted by fire or razed for a parking lot. For example, the former Masonic Temple at Peachtree St. & Cain St. (now Andrew Young International Blvd.) went up in flames on September 7, 1950, and is now the site of a parking structure.

Rock

Stone Mountain pre-carving | Claude Suttle | Dekalb History Center, Pine Lake Collection

Naturally, being “fireproof” was a selling point, not only in Atlanta’s earliest days as it entered Reconstruction, but for decades thereafter, well into the 20th Century. Repeated fires put rock quarries and granite companies such as the Stone Mountain Granite and Railway Company and the Atlanta, Stone Mountain, and Lithonia Railway at a considerable advantage, particularly Atlanta brothers William and Sam Venable of the Stone Mountain Granite Company. But the fear of fire was only one factor that helped catapult Georgia’s granite industry into a prime position to thrive and amass power and wealth from the rock dubbed “white gold.” (Granite actually does have a melting point and can disintegrate in fire). Another was the major push by politicians and granite company shareholders to use materials and resources from Georgia, such as granite, over those from other states, such as oolitic limestone from Indiana.

Georgia’s granite companies received plenty of big federal contracts, too, like the one in May 1916 to build the Marine barracks in Norfolk, VA [Atlanta Constitution; May 4, 1916]. Granite was still such a big industry in 1930 that Atlanta even welcomed a new amateur baseball league, the Granite League, comprised of amateur players from Stone Mountain, Clarkston, Tucker, Lithonia, Grayson, Brookhaven, Chamblee, Scottdale, and more. They had four matches that year with Piedmont League, Sewanee League, the Dixie League, Fulton League, and the Georgia League. In 1935, the Atlanta Constitution reported that Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia "resulted in new business for Georgia's marble and granite quarries" as a Cuban dealer visited Atlanta. In 1938, government officials still promoted jobs in the granite industry as a way to keep people off the poor rolls. It wasn't all fun and games, though, as numerous stonecutter strikes for better wages and working conditions grew violent and sometimes deadly, and there was always a steady stream of accidents at the quarries in Stone Mountain and Lithonia.

Piedmont—The name "Piedmont" comes from the French term for the same physical region, literally meaning "foothill," ultimately from Latin pedemontium, meaning "the foot of the mountains.” [Wikipedia]

Lithonia—“city/town of stone” [Wikipedia]

Ebenezer—Hebrew (ebhen hā-ʽezer): stone of help; from the application of this name by Samuel to the stone which he set up in commemoration of God's help to the Israelites in their victory over the Philistines at Mizpah (1 Samuel 7:12) [Merriam Webster]

"Sherman's neckties" art installation in Stone Mountain Village (not real artifacts)

Atlanta’s city seal depicts a phoenix ascending from flames and is flanked by the dates 1847, the year of the city’s incorporation, and 1865, the year the Civil War ended. Atlanta’s identity as, first and foremost, a railway town had been secured years earlier when it drove in the stake for the granite Zero Mile Maker. [Edited to add: the Zero Mile Marker moved to the Atlanta History Center in late 2018, which classifies the marker as marble and not granite; 11/06/18 ] The city of Stone Mountain was also officially incorporated in 1847 and served as a pivotal connection point with Atlanta and Augusta along the 171-mile Georgia Railroad, especially as the railroad was a more efficient means of transporting the seemingly unlimited supply Stone Mountain granite than a horse and buggy (in recent years the Georgia Railroad had to account for using slave labor to build itself and the selling and trafficking of slaves). Stone Mountain Granite Company was one of the consignees of the Georgia Railroad (Atlanta Constitution; July 20, 1870), and even the Georgia Railroad’s roundhouse in Augusta was made of Stone Mountain granite (Atlanta Constitution; June 20, 1869). Though no Civil War battles were ever fought at the mountain itself, Sherman and his troops, notably Garrard’s Cavalry, did pass through Stone Mountain during their March to the Sea, even likely camping in Shermantown (so named in years later), and destroyed portions of the railroad in Stone Mountain Village, leaving behind “Sherman’s neckties” at the time.

Before it officially took the name Stone Mountain in 1847, early European settlers in the area called it Rock Mountain, Rock Fort Mountain, and New Gibraltar. Even earlier, Spanish explorer Juan Pardo referred to it as Crystal Mountain, and the Creek Indians called it Lone Mountain.

Today numerous structures made of granite quarried in Stone Mountain and Arabia Mountain and Pine Mountain in nearby Lithonia (Elberton later became the center of Georgia’s granite industry) still stand throughout the city of Atlanta, particularly along the old rail corridors currently being restored for the Atlanta BeltLine. Just follow the tracks, and you’ll see how Stone Mountain granite runs through the city. I climb Stone Mountain a lot for I Am the Mountain, and I grew up in Stone Mountain, so perhaps owing to a particular law of physics — a space-time-frequency correlation with pattern recognition, if you will — I notice the mountain’s granite all over Metro Atlanta. Whenever I’m driving through Atlanta’s historic neighborhoods and main arteries and side streets — Peachtree St., North Avenue, Memorial Drive, Ponce de Leon Ave., Moreland Ave., Piedmont Ave., 10th St., Monroe Dr., N. Decatur Rd., E. Ponce de Leon Ave., Glenwood Ave., Hosea Williams Drive, Rockbridge Rd., East Lake, N. Highland Ave., and Whitefoord, to name just a few — I can’t help seeing the many old buildings, homes, churches, remnants of site walls, original neighborhood gateways, and even curbs constructed of it. Cities closest to the mountain like Stone Mountain and nearby Pine Lake utilized the stone heavily, so it's visible everywhere you look. In most cases it seems carefully preserved and has even been reincorporated into newer structures. But in other places it's abandoned, crumbling, or tagged with graffiti or, such as in the Old 4th Ward along North Avenue, covered completely or partially by colorfully painted murals (without regard for the historic aspect of the rock?).

African American men and women posed for portrait on granite steps of Atlanta University | Thomas E. Askew