The Library of Congress just released a clutch of Olmsted documents and there was a nice little Atlanta bit in there. I hoped for more, but this was nice.
Joel Hurt had begun the buildout of Inman Park and was ready to start on his next project on a big chunk of land to the east, in what he was calling the Kirkwood Land Company.
While Olmsted was transforming the massive grounds of the Biltmore in North Carolina, he had made a first visit and in June 1892, before making a second visit requested a topographic map with five foot contours.
Obviously, Hurt wasn’t ready to begin development so soon, and the next year Olmsted provided a design bill which was promptly paid
Aparently “sun prints” are a way to transfer an image to a cloth-based medium. Then came a national economic crisis which jeopardized both projects, but Inman Park still slowly progressed. The next ten years saw little progress on Druid Hills and Hurt eventually sold the whole enterprise to Asa Candler who developed it with George Washington Adair and captured the high-end Atlanta housing market from Inman Park before it progressed north to Ansley Park and Buckhead. Olmsted’s designs have remained the basis of the Druid Hills neighborhood and the recently restored linear park along Ponce de Leon Avenue.
Thanks LOC and thanks to CityLab for the heads up
ATLhistory 