Q: For a city community, Ansley Park has extraordinarily wide streets throughout the neighborhood (The Prado and others). Is there a historical explanation for this design?
—William Beck, Atlanta
A: You could say that Edwin Ansley was a visionary when he developed the neighborhood named for him.
Cars were still new to the scene in the early 20th century, but he wanted to design a suburban community with wide streets to accommodate the new technology.
Ansley surely couldn’t picture a Hummer, but he thought his idea would help sway folks to buy homes in the area just north of Piedmont Park and roughly sandwiched by Piedmont Avenue to the east and Peachtree Street to the west.
So roads like The Prado are wider than those in most older intown neighborhoods, providing plenty of room to swerve while gawking at Ansley Park’s classic architecture and natural parks.
“The curvilinear streets offered the picturesque views of pre-automobile suburbs like Inman Park, but they also sought to attract automobile owners who desired the experience of picturesque suburban living in a drivable neighborhood,” a Department of Natural Resources Historic Preservation Division summary states.
Q: Can you please provide a history of the Peachtree Road Race? How many runners ran in its first year and what was its route?
A: Thousands and thousands of those coveted T-shirts have been given out and proudly worn through the years, but only 150 runners started the first Peachtree Road Race on July 4, 1970.
There are a few of you who remember the Sears building in Buckhead.
That’s where the first race began.
It ended 6.2 miles later in downtown Atlanta, but only 110 of the runners – they’re called the “Original 110” — completed the route in the vicinity of what is now Woodruff Park.
I was surprised that the first Peachtree Road Race was sponsored by a brewery named Carling. The AJC has sponsored the race since 1976.
The first T-shirts were awarded in 1971, and by 1980, the Peachtree had become such a popular holiday tradition that registration had to be stopped at 25,000.
It was increased to 40,000 in 1990 and continued to grow.
The limit was 50,000 runners just five years later and increased to 60,000 in 2011, according to atlantatrackclub.org.
The AJC Peachtree Road Race now is the largest 10K in the world.
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