Neighbors in Atlanta's West End community are reviving a tradition, with some tweaks.

The May Day Celebration and Tour of Homes brings back the days when the neighborhood celebrated spring together. This year, the party will be much less high-society.

RENEE' HANNANS HENRY / AJC (ENLARGE)

Linc Bennett, in the dining room of his 1925 West End home, says 'I love my home and don't mind showing it off.' He has lived in the community eight years, after he and his wife discovered it when his daughter was attending nearby Spelman College.

RENEE' HANNANS HENRY / AJC (ENLARGE)

The West End neighborhood of southwest Atlanta is reviving its May Day celebration – a tradition kept up from 1909 until 1983 – with a home tour and lawn concert as a way to show off their neighborhood and encourage more people to move in.

"From 1909 until 1983, May Day was celebrated in West End," said Carl Nes, acting president of West End Neighborhood Development. "There's a marble marker behind the Wren's Nest for every year there was a May queen selected. But we don't want to recreate the old debutante, fancy-dress event. We want something that is more multicultural and unique to the West End."

To that end, neighbors have organized a Chastain-style concert with jazz great Theresa Hightower on the Wren's Nest grounds and a weekend peek into some of the area's most stunning homes.

"We certainly are not the same society we were when the May Day queens wore formal white dresses," said Nes. "We want this May Day to embrace more cultures and more people."

Neighbors also see the celebration as a way to entice more people to consider moving to West End, said tour committee chair Brenda Arrington.

"We hope to promote homeownership," she said. "We've had some problems with mortgage fraud and need to renew interest in our community and remind people we're here. We're still a secret; so many people come by and say, 'I didn't know this neighborhood was here!' They forget how close to downtown and the train we are. I love being able to walk places from my house, and I love my neighbors and the diversity we have here."

The homes on the tour represent a cross-section of development in the neighborhood, which is west of downtown and south of I-20, close to the Atlanta University Center consortium of historically black colleges.

"We wanted houses that were different, so we have some Victorian, some Craftsman, two brand-new lofts, some on streets that have been redone, others that are in parts of the neighborhood that are still up-and-coming," Arrington said. "Some are a bit off the beaten path."

Among the residents who will be welcoming visitors into their private residences is artist Linc Wycliffe Bennett, who moved to a home on Peeples Street with his wife, Dothlyn, eight years ago.

"We lived in Connecticut, but my daughter attended Spelman and my wife fell in love with Atlanta," said Bennett. "We lived in another part of town, but my wife drove by this house and knew she wanted to live in it."

The 1925 two-story has four bedrooms, a wraparound front porch, a second floor porch and plenty of wall space to show off Bennett's creations — fabric collages that look like paintings.

"I love my house and don't mind showing it off," said Bennett. "I know the neighborhood is in transition; we're already seeing an influx of people taking advantage of the opportunities over here. This tour may give them another reason to move."

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