Vine City: A Look at One of Atlanta's Most Prestigious Addresses 100 Years Ago.

Vine City’s history is very closely related to Atlanta’s University Center’ history. The Vine City neighborhood was once the “Northeast Lot” of the Atlanta University properties and by 1910 it was “9 ½ -acre cluster of three important homes:  those of [University] President Horace Bumstead, Professor George A. Towns, and insurance magnate Alonzo F. Herndon” (Byrne and White: 1982).  The Atlanta University Center is home to some of the oldest buildings in Atlanta and it originated in 1865 when the Atlanta University was founded (Bowen & Carnes: 1977).  Morehouse College followed in 1867, then Spellman College, Morris Brown College and Clark University in the 1880s (Clarke: 1996).  The Atlanta University Center is also home to a “group of the country's major institutions of higher learning for African Americans” (Natl. Park Service). 

By the early 1900’s, not only an African American middle-class was emerging in Atlanta, but an elite class was also emerging (Byrne and White: 1982).  Alonzo Herndon and his family represented the new emerging African American elite; Alonzo, Atlanta’s first successful African-American businessman and millionaire, married Adrienne McNeil Herndon, also an elite African American who taught at the university (Byrne and White: 1982).  During that period the racial composition though predominantly African American, was more mixed with white working and middle class families, and even some white prominent figures moved to the area (Clarke 1996). 

In 1917 a fire destroyed many homes in the Auburn Avenue neighborhood, another predominantly middle-class African-American community, and as a result many families moved to Vine City helping establish the community (Clarke 1996).  After World War II, the Vine City neighborhood began to deteriorate, I believe in part due to the continued segregation and enforcement of Jim Crow laws, especially after the Atlanta Riots of 1906.     

In 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr. also chose Vine City as the neighborhood to move with his young family.   After he died, his widow Coretta Scott King continued living at the same home until late in life (Clarke 1996).  According to Athlone Clarke in Lest We Forget, when Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about improving our communities, he was thinking about communities like his own, like Vine City; “…we know he was referring to the impoverishment that was slowly choking Vine City…the decay was quite obvious to him from his doorstep.”  (Clarke 1996, p. 25).   Other important Civil Rights figures like Dorothy Bolden, the founder of the National Domestic Worker’s Union, also resided in Vine City (Clarke 1996).

Despite Martin Luther King’s efforts to bring relief and improvement to his community, Vine City continued deteriorating during the last 40 years (Clarke: 1996).  The construction of the Georgia World Congress Center in the 1970s (Clarke: 1996), as well as the construction of the Georgia Dome in the 1990s, seemed to have marginalized Vine City even more instead of bringing progress and improvements to the area.  With the construction of the new Mercedes Benz Dome and the recent revitalization efforts, this is truly the time to recognize Vine City’s important role in Atlanta’s history and bring back the prestigious neighborhood it once was.

Vine City - Then & Now

Source: Karen Medina-Lomba