Q: I have lived in Metro Atlanta (OTP) for 30 years and worked in Buckhead and downtown for years, but I don’t know where Old Fourth Ward is located. Please tell me what it is and what are its geographical boundaries.
—Colin S. Brady, Marietta
A: Old Fourth Ward has new life, thanks to its continuing transformation from a tired area to one of the city's trendy and popular communities.
Lofts, restaurants, galleries, businesses and bars are popping up throughout Old Fourth Ward – or O4W – which gained its name from a former voting district, just east of downtown Atlanta.
“Things have changed here. This is a good place,” said Joe Stewardson, who’s lived at the corner of Boulevard and Irwin Street for 17 years.
He’s also the president of the Old Fourth Ward Business Association, which he said is the third largest business association in the city, behind Buckhead and Midtown.
“We have a lot of entrepreneurs here, and they’re completely rocking it,” Stewardson said, adding location probably is the primary reason for Old Fourth Ward’s increased popularity.
“I’m looking out my back window and I can see the Westin Peachtree (Plaza),” he said during a recent phone interview. “The airport is about 12 minutes away. An easy drive, unless it’s peak rush hour.”
A map on the Old Fourth Ward Business Association’s website (o4wba.com/about/neighborhood-associations) gives its distinct boundaries, but roughly, it stretches from Ponce de Leon Avenue in the north to the new Beltline in the east, to DeKalb Avenue/Decatur Street in the south and as far as Peachtree Street to the west.
I didn’t know Sweet Auburn was part of Old Fourth Ward, but Stewardson assured me that it is included in the diverse community.
Stewardson, a photographer by trade, has developed three projects, including turning an old grocery store into the building that houses Café Circa, the Edgewood Corner Tavern and Sister Louisa’s Church of the Living Room & Ping Pong Emporium.
Old Fourth Ward was a popular area for both whites and blacks until the middle of the 20th century, when it began to decline. The area included Buttermilk Bottom, perhaps the city’s worst slum, which was torn down in the 1960s.
Housing projects, deserted factories and drug hangouts dominated the landscape for decades.
Old Fourth Ward will host the inaugural Fire in the Fourth (fireinthe4th.com) on May 2, a festival that will mark the anniversary of the 1917 fire that devastated the area.
“This has been an enormous transition,” Stewardson said. “We’re going in the right direction.”
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