Imagine a bright, sunshiny day filled with hope and promise of great things to come. Twenty-five years ago Monday that was the scene at Underground Atlanta when doors of The World of Coca-Cola opened to the public for the first time.
The three-story building housed over 1,000 artifacts chronicling the history of The Coca-Cola Company. With state-of-the-art exhibits including a bottling fantasy that appeared to fill bottles as they traveled around the room, the heart of downtown Atlanta had hopes to thrive.
At the museum entrance was a huge neon Coca-Cola sign (30 feet high and 26 feet wide). The tour started on the top floor and worked downward, featuring displays presented in chronological order, interactive exhibits such as a replica 1930s soda fountain, video presentations of Coca-Cola advertising over the years, and a 10-minute film called “Every Day of Your Life” about Coke around the world.
The highlight of the tour was the ‘Spectacular Fountain,’ allowing visitors to sample various Coke products. At the ‘Tastes of the States’ area in the same room, guests could try 22 soft drink brands, some available only regionally, including Citra and Barq’s Red Creme Soda. The ‘Tastes of the World’ exhibit in the International Lounge featured brands made by the Coca-Cola Company around the world. There was also a gift shop.
The original museum welcomed about a million visitors a year to become Atlanta’s most visited indoor attraction at the time.
Adjacent to Underground Atlanta at 55 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, the museum remained open 17 years until it moved to its current location, on the edge of Centennial Olympic Park, on Memorial Day weekend in 2007.
The company wanted to update the facility with something bigger and more modern where more Coca-Cola memorabilia could be displayed. The move made sense, to place The World of Coca-Cola near other major attractions: Phillips Arena, the CNN Center and the newly built Georgia Aquarium.
By September 2007, the former building stood empty, the neon sign had been removed, and there was little to indicate its former use.
Besides the giant sign, the move took with it thousands of visitors, leaving an empty, gray mausoleum. Restaurants and food courts that needed those tourists have since left. The storefronts above Underground are mostly vacant or filled with small-scale retailers that don’t attract the masses of people Underground was designed to accommodate.
With a more open floor plan, the current World of Coke is almost twice the size of its cube-shaped predecessor. The design of the new structure allows it to be easily updated as trends and advertising campaigns change, something the previous museum lacked.
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