As a new arrival to Atlanta, I barely noticed the glass-and-steel skybridges threaded between downtown towers at first. But on sweltering afternoons walking around downtown, I began to notice figures gliding through those elevated corridors — cool, calm and distant from the heat, traffic and danger below. They seemed to belong to a private world floating above the city. I wondered who those people were. They looked glamorous, elevated not just physically but socially, as if they belonged to a private world floating above the rest of us.
Years later, stepping inside one for the first time, I felt that separation firsthand. The air-conditioning, the views, the sense of height — suddenly the streets below looked remote, even irrelevant. When you’re on a skybridge, downtown Atlanta feels like watching a TV show of city life rather than being part of it. From the outside, the bridges had seemed opaque; from within, they revealed a hidden city in the sky.
Suspended above busy streets, these enclosed pedestrian corridors connect hotels, office towers, government buildings and parking decks, offering a climate-controlled shortcut from one block to another. A debate over skybridges heated up earlier this summer when the Atlanta City Council approved the state’s request to build a $10 million skybridge over Martin Luther King Jr. Drive connecting the State Capitol to a new legislative building.
The web of bridges is part of Atlanta’s identity — visible from Peachtree Street as transparent tubes strung between towers — but they are also a source of civic debate. Critics argue that skybridges suck life off the sidewalks and privatize public space, while defenders say they were a practical solution to crime, traffic and weather when downtown was struggling.
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
A ‘lifeblood’ for some
For some Atlantans, the skybridges are more than just shortcuts — they’re the arteries of an entire subculture. Dot Steverson, known in streaming and gaming circles as littlereddot, has been a fixture at DragonCon for years, co-hosting the annual parade broadcast and cosplaying across downtown’s connected hotels.
“The skybridges are the lifeblood of DragonCon — or maybe I should say the veins,” she said. “They’re not simply a path from one hotel to another. It’s fandom adventure costumes, familiar faces, laughs and unexpected community art projects.”
Each year, tens of thousands of fans descend on Atlanta for the convention, which occurs Aug. 28–Sept. 1 this year, and the bridges become their stage. For cosplayers, the enclosed corridors provide shelter from rain that could ruin elaborate makeup, heat that could exacerbate the wearing of heavy costumes and protection from Atlanta traffic. More than that, they’re a space where fans can show off outfits that might be too elaborate — or too risqué — for the sidewalks outside the designated DragonCon hotel zone.
“It’s like a mini DragonCon parade,” said Steverson. The bridges pulse with photo ops, spontaneous meetups and moments of camaraderie. At the same time, this world remains somewhat sealed off. The skybridges bring people together, but they also create a closed-loop community, visible from the street yet out of reach to those who aren’t part of the convention.
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
John Portman’s legacy
Atlanta’s skybridges are inextricably linked to John Portman, Atlanta’s most famous architect-developer, who designed most of the skybridges. His futuristic hotels and commercial complexes reshaped the skyline beginning with Peachtree Center in the 1960s. His projects weren’t just about buildings — they were about creating entire environments.
In “The Architect as Developer” (1976, McGraw-Hill), which he cowrote with Jonathan Barnett, Portman described cities as “living entities” that must evolve to meet people’s daily needs. He drew inspiration from European plazas and Scandinavian satellite towns, envisioning environments where pedestrians could move easily between work, shopping and leisure.
But in Atlanta, that vision translated into complexes deeply entwined with the automobile. At Peachtree Center, visitors could drive downtown, park in the garage and spend the entire day inside — walking to their office, eating lunch in a food court, shopping or relaxing in an atrium — without ever stepping onto a public sidewalk.
For all their ambition, the bridges drew criticism. Detractors argue that they privatized public life, pulling people off sidewalks and into corridors where only paying guests or office workers belonged.
Rising Fawn architect Richard Rothman is not a fan. He described the street-facing entrances to Portman’s buildings as “low and shadowy” and claimed that because of the bridges, “the town is dead. Everyone is up above in all those glass tubes.” Rothman says Portman’s architecture is designed for privileged people who want to avoid the grittier aspects of city streets.
But according to Ellen Dunham-Jones, architecture professor at Georgia Tech and director of its Urban Design Program, the skybridges made sense at the time.
“Portman introduced the skybridges at a time when downtown Atlanta was perceived as a scary, crime-ridden place,” she said. “Both by the out-of-towners he needed to attract nine times a year to his wholesale retail marts and the hotels he built to support them, and to the suburbanites he needed to fill his new office buildings.”
Portman’s solution, she said, was to create an interior world that felt safe and glamorous at a time when downtown Atlanta was perceived as dangerous. But times have changed, and the fortress-like legacy those designs left behind makes it difficult to retrofit them into the lively, engaging sidewalks new generations crave today.
That fortress-like quality is still visible in how difficult the Portman skybridges are to access. Some remain open to the public, particularly those connecting Portman’s trio of hotels — the Hyatt Regency, the Marriot Marquis and the Westin Peachtree Plaza. Others are sealed shut, accessible only to employees or not at all.
The once-grand span between Peachtree Center and a fitness center now languishes in disrepair. The tallest of them all — a 20-story-high bridge linking Peachtree Center to the roof of 240 Peachtree Street at the Atlanta Merchandise Mart — has been closed altogether. Even the most basic information about them can be elusive. A representative of America’s Mart, which has the most — more than 10 — declined to answer queries about their skybridges.
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
Bridges beyond Portman
Not all of Atlanta’s skybridges were the work of John Portman. Georgia State University has built or acquired its own network over the years — five in total, four of which are still active. Unlike Portman’s garrison-like spans, these walkways are filled with everyday foot traffic: students hustling between classes, lugging backpacks and laptops across downtown.
Some of the bridges date back decades, like the connector at 25 Park Place, the former SunTrust bank tower now owned by the university. Others are relatively new. The glass-and-steel link between the Petit Science Center and the Research Science Center opened in 2016.
The most beloved may be the two-level bridge joining Library North and Library South built in 2009. Flooded with natural light, it’s more than a shortcut — it’s become a kind of informal student lounge, a place where friends meet up or pause between study sessions while the city moves around and below them.
The bridges provide “much-needed functional and safe connectivity,” said Ramesh Vakamudi, GSU’s vice president for facilities management. He said they are embraced as a part of campus life rather than a retreat from it.
Other non-Portman connectors are equally utilitarian: the Georgia-Pacific Building’s bridge to its parking garage, the Fulton County bridge linking the judicial center to county offices and the Butler Street Parking Deck’s twin spans reaching the Twin Towers State Building and the Pete Hackney parking deck.
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
A patchwork system
Elsewhere, skybridges have grown into civic landmarks. Minneapolis is home to the most extensive system in the United States: more than 8 miles of enclosed walkways weaving buildings together in an integrated grid. The system has its critics for draining sidewalk life, but it is also part of the city’s culture — complete with maps, signage and even a tribute in song.
Atlanta’s bridges tell a different story — one of ambition and ambivalence. They’ve become a patchwork of public, private, open and closed corridors; some beloved and well-used, like Georgia State’s, others locked or languishing in disrepair.
Some say they are relics of a time when cities sought to wall themselves away, but others say they are symbols of a desire to connect and protect. They began as bold gestures of modern infrastructure, yet have often been criticized as fortresses sealed off from the life of the street. Today, they survive in fragments: a little glamour, a little grit and a little mystery.
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