A LOOK BACK

This Month in History

Ann Taylor Boutwell

Sept. 5, 1917: During World War I, Camp Gordon, a temporary housing and training camp for new soldiers opened, where DeKalbPeachtree Airport is located today. Its namesake was John Brown Gordon, Confederate general, Georgia governor and senator. At the end of the war in 1918, the total number of soldiers passing through the camp included 6,153 officers and 227,312 enlisted men.

Sept. 6, 1897: Under shade trees near today’s 1015 Edgewood Ave., the Inman Park United Methodist Church congregation, founded in 1866, sat on wooden benches and sang hymns. That Monday afternoon at 5 p.m., they witnessed the laying of the cornerstone for the new church. Pastor Henry J. Ellis named each item placing it in a metal box. After Dr. Warren Akin Candler, tenth president of Emory College, delivered the address, he secured his manuscript in the box. The building’s architect, Willis Franklin Denny II, and contractor, George E. Murphy, lowered and set the stone. The small historical landmark church, made of grey Stone Mountain granite, was dedicate April 17, 1898.

Sept. 7, 1988: The Castle, the historic home at the corner of 15th and Peachtree in Midtown once called a “hunk of junk” by Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, is saved by AT&T. The communications company signed an agreement not to demolish the 12,000-squarefoot, five-story home, also known as Fort Peace, built by Ferdinand Dallas McMillan and wife, Lucy Reagan, in 1908. The couple bought the land in 1904 for $2,190 for their retirement home. In December 1989, the Atlanta Urban Design Commission deemed it an Atlanta Landmark and presented Surber, Barber, Choate and Hertlein Architect in 1991 an Award of Excellence for its extensive and careful exterior restoration. The Castle recently received yet another new lease on life by being renovated and transformed into a restaurant and entertainment space.

Sept. 11, 1966: Led by Coach Norb Hecker, the Atlanta Falcons took to the now demolished Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium as the newest member of the National Football League. In 1965, owner Rankin Smith, Sr., invited football fans to select the team’s name. “Falcons” was suggested by Julia Elliott, a high school teacher from Griffin, and became the moniker. Gov. Carl E. Sanders and Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. wished the players well. A crowd of 54,418 attended the Falcons opening game to watch them get beaten by The Rams, 19-14.

Sept. 14, 1985: The Atlanta Botanical Gardens in Piedmont Park dedicated the Gardenhouse, its first permanent structure. Atlanta architect Anthony Ames modeled his $2 million, 24,000 square-feet building after the 16th century Villa Giulia in Rome. Mayor Andrew Young, Fulton County Commissioner Michael Lomax, Mrs. (Louise) Ivan Allen Jr., and Mrs. Deen Day Smith launched the celebrated ribbon cutting ritual. Docent guided tours followed as well as an exhibit of Frederick Law Olmstead, Sr. (1822-1903) concept of the urban park, which premiered at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1980.

Sept. 22, 1991: Mayor Maynard Jackson welcomed guests to a tribute honoring city historian Franklin Garrett’s 85th birthday (Sept. 25, 1906) at the Fox Theater. All proceeds for the event benefitted the restoration of the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum effort.

Sept. 24, 1999: Elton John performed at the grand opening of the new Philips Arena in Downtown, which replaced the old Omni Coliseum, which opened October 14, 1972 and was demolished in July 1997.

Sept. 23-25, 1906: During the race riot in Atlanta, James Wesley Edwards Bowen, the first African American president of the Gammon Theological Seminary, and William H. Crogman, the first African American president of Clark University, protected the community’s terrorstricken women and children. The institutions were located at the south end of Capital Street. Both presidents agreed that the guilty should be punished and the innocent protected. Four months earlier, the south Atlanta community suffered a devastating fire, which swept over 40 aces destroying 40 dwelling and leaving 400 residents homeless.

Historian Ann Taylor Boutwell is a docent at the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum. Contact her at annboutwell@bellsouth.net.

By Collin Kelley INtown Editor

Atlanta Public Schools’ new superintendent, Dr. Meria Carstarphen, arrived at last month’s Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods meeting early to introduce herself individually to each member of the audience.

“Hi, I’m Meria,” she said, extending her hand and offering an easy smile to parents and community members.

She’s probably already tired of being called a “breath of fresh air,” but Carstarphen’s combination of friendliness and frankness is a refreshing change of tone and demeanor after years of the old guard that aided in ruining APS’s reputation after the cheating scandal, which is still playing out in Atlanta’s courtrooms.

As the new and very public face of APS, Carstarphen knows she has a mountain to climb in restoring faith in the school system. Her turnaround of the Austin, Tx. school district – in attendance numbers, innovative programs, graduation rates – has given Carstarphen the surely unwanted moniker of “savior” of APS. But the Selma, Ala. native has been lauded for her track record in Austin, St. Paul, Minn. and Washington DC, while also gaining a reputation – if you believe all the press accounts – for her demanding and sometimes confrontational style of leadership.

“Austin was gracious enough to understand the challenges facing APS and let me come out early,” Carstarphen said about her arrival this past spring in Atlanta.

Although she didn’t officially begin work until July, Carstarphen was given full access to APS, had meetings with outgoing interim Superintendent Erroll Davis, a retreat with the Atlanta School Board, zeroed in on the district’s most pressing issues and also started pressing the flesh by showing up at schools and meetings around the city.

Before opening day on Aug. 4, Carstarphen was also dealing with transportation, hiring, vendors, safety, security and a laundry list of other issues that needed quick solutions. “We wanted to open this school year with more cohesiveness and less craziness,” she said. “That’s part of building trust back with the community.”

One of her top priorities was hiring new principals since there was a two-thirds turnover in school leadership. Carstarphen was candid about the sorry state of hiring when it came to principals at APS.

“We brought more rigor to the principal selection process,” she said, “because it was clear that background checks hadn’t been performed and there was a disconnect between finding principals that had vision and direction for the school we were hiring them to lead. There was this looseness about hiring and accountability. Those days are over.”

With principals in place, Carstarphen said the dismal job APS had done in the past of recruiting teachers early would also be a thing of the past. “This has been a problem that has plagued APS,” she said. “We’re going to begin looking for teachers early in the year instead of a month before school starts.”

Carstarphen was also able to shake loose money to hire more teachers over the summer so that when classes resumed on Aug. 4 there were only a handful of openings left. Rather than hire unqualified teachers, Carstarphen frankly said there were longterm substitutes who were better qualified than some of the teaching candidates, so those subs would be in place until more talented teachers could be found.

“This might have been the smoothest opening day APS has had in a long time,” Carstarphen said. “We had so few calls about concerns and issues that I thought our phone system was broken.”

While there are many short-term fixes that need to be made, Carstarphen is also looking ahead. While fielding questions from the audience, she again spoke candidly about her opinions and feelings on everything from early learning and charter schools to high stakes testing and classroom size.

It’s widely known that Carstarphen is a firm supporter of early learning, but she said funding and a commitment from the state and community would be big factors in expanding the opportunities. One potential funding source: the Georgia Lottery.