By Mark Davis
He knows the history of his street. When Auburn Avenue was in its heyday, it hummed with commerce. It was the place where deals were made, dreams created.
Ais Yorq Ahmadi leaned against the counter of his restaurant, Auburn Pizza Lounge, and nodded toward the street that gave his business its name.
“When you hear about ‘Black Wall Street,’ it was here,” said Ahmadi, who opened his restaurant near the corner of Auburn and Piedmont Avenues three years ago. “There’s a lot of history here, and we’re losing it.”
The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation agrees, and this year included the Sweet Auburn Commercial District in its annual Places in Peril report.
The survey, released last week, also includes the Candler Park Golf Course, which Atlanta officials have considered closing to save money.
The eighth annual report, designed to raise awareness about Georgia’s historic properties, lists eight more sites it considers endangered: Tift Warehouse, Albany; Dobbins Mining landscape, Bartow County; Stilesboro Academy, Taylorsville; Cave Spring Log Cabin, Floyd County; Monticello Commercial Building, Jasper County; Lexington Presbyterian Church, Oglethorpe County; Hancock County Courthouse, Sparta; and Traveler’s Rest State Historic Site, Toccoa.
The trust considered 29 sites before narrowing the list to 10, said Mark C. McDonald, the organization’s president and CEO.
“We wish we could focus on every endangered site in Georgia,” he said, “but we can’t.”
Inclusion on the list is no guarantee that a site will be saved, McDonald said. He cited Rutherford Hall, a University of Georgia dormitory built in 1939 that was in last year’s list. The university demolished it four months ago and will build a new residence hall on the site.
Other properties, such as the John Berrien House in Savannah, have had happier endings. Built about 1800 for Berrien, a Revolutionary War officer, the house now belongs to a Berrien descendant who plans to use the downtown structure for residential and commercial use.
The Sweet Auburn district holds similar promise for residents and businesses, said McDonald. A proposed streetcar could infuse the district with new life, as would students from nearby Georgia State University, he said.
The district comprises a four-block stretch of Auburn Avenue from Piedmont Avenue to the Downtown Connector. At one time, according to the trust, about 40 buildings, erected between the 1880s and 1960s, lined either side of the avenue. In recent years, 18 have been demolished.
“It’s definitely endangered,” he said.
Earlier this year, developers wanted to flatten the historic Atlanta Daily World newspaper building, located on Auburn Avenue near Piedmont Avenue, to build housing. The city’s Urban Design Commission denied their demolition request, but the proposal worried preservationists, McDonald said.
Auburn Avenue is “really in danger of losing its character,” McDonald said. “We don’t want to lose any more buildings.”
Nor did three guys enjoying a warm afternoon on the links at Candler Park want to lose their favorite course. When they heard the course had been included on the trust’s list of imperiled sites, Brad Riddell, Matt LeRoy and Chad Gerosa were surprised — supportive, too.
“It didn’t used to be that great of a course,” Riddell said. “Now look at it.” He pointed toward a tee on the far side of a gentle slope, a green oval ringed by gold- and red-leafed hardwoods. A hawk soared overhead.
The course dates to 1922, when Coca-Cola magnate Asa Candler donated 55 acres to be used as a public park. It was an act that was part generosity, part father’s pique. When he learned that officials at the Druid Hills course wouldn’t let women play, Candler hired a female landscape architect to design a course where his daughter and other women could tee up.
In recent years, city parks officials have proposed closing the course to save money, which has prompted area residents to post protest signs in their yards.
The course should be preserved, said Gerosa, a resident of Inman Park. It’s a good place where the occasional golfer — that’s him — can work on his game without slowing better players, he said.
“I think it’s a nice little course,” he said. “It’s a good place for beginners. It’s pretty laid back.”
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