For a while, Jonah McDonald’s book “Secret Atlanta” was one of the best kept secrets in the city. Published last year by a small, niche press just days after the country shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the book didn’t get the fanfare it deserved.
For a book designed to inspire people to get out of the house and explore the city, it couldn’t have been worse timing. But now that the pandemic appears to be waning, Reedy Press has announced a relaunch of the book.
A compendium of weird and wacky attractions accompanied by colorful backstories, “Secret Atlanta” (Reedy Press, $20.95, secretatlanta.com) provides an offbeat perspective of the city and a fun way to spend the day seeking out its quirky discoveries.
But there’s more to it than that, says McDonald, a park naturalist for DeKalb County who lives in the Kirkwood neighborhood of Atlanta. It’s about encouraging people to get out of their comfort zones and engage with parts of the metro area they may not frequent.
“When I had this idea of what ‘Secret Atlanta’ could be, I wanted to say, let’s broaden our idea of what our city is and let’s broaden our place in the city,” said McDonald. “So, instead of just staying in my bubble and doing the same thing I do, day in and day out, week after week, month after month, let me go find something that’s new, that’s fresh and that might connect me with a person who I may not have connected with otherwise.”
This isn’t McDonald’s first foray into writing about Atlanta’s hidden pleasures. “Secret Atlanta” was inspired by his experience writing and promoting his first book, “Hiking Atlanta’s Hidden Forests,” published in 2014 by the University of Georgia Press.
When he spoke at book events, McDonald discovered that people were eager to tell him about their favorite “hidden forests.” Often, they were places well known to McDonald, but he got a kick out of witnessing the joy readers expressed when relaying their experiences to him.
“The opportunity with ‘Secret Atlanta’ was to tell the stories. Every story in this book isn’t going to (surprise) every single person. Some of the stories you read, you might think, ‘I know about that place, I go there all the time.’ But that doesn’t mean just because it’s part of your everyday life that everybody knows about it,” he said. “Atlanta is a city of little bubbles where, if you’re not in the bubble that goes to Plaza Fiesta for lunch every afternoon, you may have never heard of Plaza Fiesta.”
For those not familiar, Plaza Fiesta is a mall on Buford Highway and a popular gathering place for the Latin American community with an outstanding food court.
Among the book’s 90 entries, several are widely known, such as Centennial Olympic Park and Historic Oakland Cemetery. But McDonald draws the reader’s attention to specific oddities within those popular destinations that tell little-known backstories about the residents of the city. In the cemetery, it’s a foot stone on the grave of Alton “TeTe” Demar Bowers that reads: “He was a fool. But Julia loved him.” In the park, it’s a brick with the inscription: “Liza will you marry me?”
Despite McDonald’s unabashed love of Atlanta, which the Memphis native has called home since 2003, he doesn’t shy away from the uglier aspects of the city’s history. Entries include Atlanta firehouse No. 16, where the city’s first Black firefighters were segregated, and the former site of two barricades across Peyton and Harlan roads built in 1962 to separate Black residents from white residents.
“There are stories in the book that aren’t just boosterism. There are stories that are hard ones about our city — about the race riots, about the marginalization of people and people getting used,” he said.
Credit: Stephen Nowland
Credit: Stephen Nowland
For a city filled with unique restaurants, two entries stand out: Nicola’s Restaurant, a Lebanese eatery that doubles as a dance party on Friday and Saturday nights, and Chow Club Atlanta, an underground supper club that specializes in international cuisines.
“I included those two because those are essential to what I want my Atlanta be. I want my Atlanta to be a table where everyone’s welcome and everybody can share stories and break bread,” said McDonald.
Forced to choose his favorite entries in the book, McDonald narrows it down to three. One is the Inman Park lock box, a single-cell holding tank for petty criminals in Delta Park that dates back to the late 1800s.
“It’s just sitting in this city park without any interpretation,” said McDonald. “I used to drive by it for the longest time, thinking it was an electrical box or something. And it turns out, it’s the smallest prison cell in the city, although it’s not used anymore.”
Another is the Crypt of Civilization, a time capsule in the basement of Phoebe Hearst Memorial Hall at Oglethorpe University.
Credit: Jonah McDonald
Credit: Jonah McDonald
“In the 1930s, the president of Oglethorpe University came up with this idea: ‘Hey, we could be just like the ancient Egyptians. We could seal off stuff from our culture and then, 6,000 years later, archaeologists will unearth it and try to figure out who we were.’ So, he sealed off a whole bunch of bric-a-brac from the 1930s in this room, and it’s not to be opened until something crazy like 8000 AD.”
And finally, there is the Collectible and Antique Chair Gallery, aka Museum of Miniature Chairs, in Stone Mountain.
“Barbara Hartsfield owns the largest collection of miniature chairs in the world and has a tiny, little three-room museum in downtown Stone Mountain in an antebellum home that’s she’s converted into a miniature chair gallery with over 3,000 tiny chairs,” said McDonald. “Barbara has a passion for these miniature chairs, which I wouldn’t care about if it wasn’t for her passion.”
And that gets to the heart of what McDonald set out to accomplish with “Secret Atlanta.”
“Hearing somebody else’s story, you fall in love with them, and you fall in love with our city, and you fall in love with whatever that topic is because of the passion you gain from hearing that person’s story.”
Credit: Jonah McDonald
Credit: Jonah McDonald
‘Secret Atlanta’ sites
Atlanta Firehouse No. 16. Free. 1048 Joseph E. Boone Blvd., Atlanta. atlantaga.gov
Chow Club Atlanta. $50. On hiatus until June. chowclubatlanta.com
Collectible & Antique Chair Gallery. Temporarily closed during COVID-19 pandemic. $5. 994 Main St., Stone Mountain. museumofminiaturechairs.com
Crypt of Civilization. Free. By appointment only. Phoebe Hearst Memorial Hall, Oglethorpe University, 4484 Peachtree Road NE, Atlanta. Email: www.archives@oglethorpe.edu
Inman Park lock box. Free. Delta Park, 47 Delta Place, Atlanta.
Nicola’s Restaurant. 5-10 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. Dancing starts at 8:15 p.m. 1602 LaVista Road NE, Atlanta. 404-325-2524, nicolas-restaurant.com
Plaza Fiesta. Free. 4166 Buford Highway NE, Atlanta. plazafiesta.net
Former site of Peyton Forest barricades. Free. Intersection of Harlan Road SW and Tee Road SW, and intersection of Peyton Road SW and Peyton Place SW, Atlanta.
NONFICTION
“Secret Atlanta”
by Jonah McDonald
Reedy Press
216 pages, $20.95
