ATLANTA, the capital of Georgia, U.S.A., and its largest city, in the north-central part of the State, 8 m. from the Chatta hoochee river; lying mostly in Fulton county, of which it is the county seat, but partly also in De Kalb county. It is on the Dixie and the Bankhead highways, has a municipal airport, and is served by I 5 lines of eight railways : the Atlanta, Birmingham and Coast, the Atlanta and West Point, the Central of Georgia, the Georgia, the Louisville and Nashville, the Nashville, Chatta nooga and St. Louis, the Seaboard Air Line, and the Southern. It is the largest city between Washington and New Orleans, the com mercial and financial capital of the south-east, and also an im portant manufacturing and educational centre. The population was 89,872 in 1900; 1J4,839 in 191o; 200,616 in 1920, of whom 62,796 were negroes and 4,738 foreign born; and was 270,366 (after several annexations of territory) in 1930 by the Federal census.
The city lies on the Allegheny watershed, at an altitude of 1,000-1,175 ft., and is surrounded by the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. The rainfall is evenly distributed through the year, and the average mean monthly temperature ranges between in January and 78.1° in July. The air is bracing, and deaths from sunstroke are unknown.
Atlanta owes its existence and development to the railroads. In 1836 the present site of the Union station was selected for the southern terminus of a projected State railway; and within a few decades, as one railway after another built from other direc tions to the same point, it became the principal transportation centre in the southern States. The city was laid out in a circle with a radius of It m., which had for its centre the old Union station. The original area has been increased by successive annex ations of territory in all directions until it is now 31•7 sq.m., and the metropolitan area includes about III sq.miles. As the city was almost completely destroyed by Sherman's raid in 1864, it is nearly all of recent construction. In 1920 a city planning commission was established, and it has secured the adoption of a zoning ordinance (19 2 2) which will promote the diffusion of population. There are beautiful streets and residence sections, among them Peachtree street, Ponce de Leon avenue, Pace's Ferry road, Druid Hills, Ansley Park, and Morningside Park. The business section has many large hotels and sky-scrapers; its principal office-buildings contain over 2,500,00o sq.ft. of floor space. The streets are overcrowded with traffic, and projects for widening some of them are under consideration. The prin cipal railway station, the Terminal, is modern and well equipped. The old Union station is still used by three roads.
The State Capitol, built in 1884-89, is designed after the National Capitol in Washington. The Federal Reserve Bank is a magnificent building of Georgia marble. The Fulton county court house, of granite and terra-cotta tile, the city auditorium-ar moury, which has a hall seating 6,000, the Federal building and the Carnegie library (opened 1902) are other conspicuous public buildings. The Georgia training school for girls, a State ref orma tory institution, is about 7m. outside the city. On the southern boundary of the city are the State home for Confederate veterans; the Federal penitentiary, one of the three prisons maintained by the U.S. Government; and Ft. McPherson, a large army post of the 4th Corps Area, which has its headquarters in the city. There are many points of historic interest in and near the city, especially in connection with the Civil War. The home of Joel Chandler Harris, the author of "Uncle Remus," is kept as a memorial to him ; and the old red brick building in which Wood row Wilson began the practice of law still stands. There is a statue of Henry W. Grady in front of the city hall, and the memory of this beloved orator and editor, who did much to miti gate the bitterness between the North and the South after the Civil War, is further cherished in the names of the largest city hospital and one of the leading hotels.
There are 61 parks, squares, and open spaces in the city, with a total area of 1,200 acres. They include 24 playgrounds for chil dren, 62 double tennis-courts, two nine-hole golf courses, 12 base ball diamonds, three football fields, six swimming pools, and two basketball courts—all maintained by the city for public use. The largest parks are Piedmont (185 ac.) ; Grant (144 ac.), which contains Ft. Walker, a part of the breastworks in the battle of Atlanta; and Lakewood (386 ac.), which is used as fair-grounds by the South-eastern Fair Association. There are several fine country clubs outside the city; and in all (public and private) there are ten golf courses here in the home of Bobby Tones.
The city pumps its water-supply from the Chattahoochee river, and the present equipment is sufficient to supply a population 5o larger than is now served. The sewerage system (a double system, with one set of pipes to carry off storm water, and another for the sewage) extends to 90% of the total street mileage, and additional mains are under construction. Coal comes from mines near by in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and is cheap. Electrical energy is brought in by nine long-distance high tension transmission lines, from various water-power develop ments. Most of the industries use electric power; the total supplied to Atlanta in 1925 amounted to 267,837,448 kilowatt hours. The power company operates also a steam-heating plant, which provides heat from underground mains for offices and other buildings in the central business district. The assessed valuation of property for purposes of taxation was $369,365,690 in 1926, representing an actual value of about $53o,000,000. There were 53,061 telephones in use that year, and in 1925 the number of licenses issued for privately owned passenger motor cars in the city and Fulton county was 41,651. The cost of living in Atlanta runs 7 or 8% below the average for American cities.
Atlanta's trade area embraces the entire south-eastern quarter of the United States. In 1926 there were 394 wholesale houses and 3,749 retail establishments in the city, and 4o transport companies operating 13o motor trucks for commercial hauling exclusively; Soo cars of merchandise and package freight moved out daily over the various railways; and the post office receipts were $3,628,823. While Atlanta ranks 33rd in population (1920) among the cities of the United States, it ranks 2 i st in amount of postal receipts, and 15th in bank clearings. It is the seat of the sixth Federal Reserve Bank. Debits to individual accounts in the city's banks amounted to $1,905,259,00o in 1925, and clearing-house exchanges to $3,370,400,000. Retail sales for 1926 totalled $177,782,800, or $728 per capita; sales by the wholesale establishments, There were 428 manufacturing establishments within the city limits in 1927, and the aggregate value of their output was $115, 830,250, about 19% of the total for the State. Many more are located outside the city, within the metropolitan area. Printing and publishing, especially of agricultural and trade journals, is an important industry. The leading manufactures include cotton goods, cottonseed oil, furniture and other lumber products, fer tilizer, agricultural machinery and implements, and (as in all modern American cities) confectionery, ice-cream and bakery products; but there are no dominating industries, and more than 1,50o commodities are made within the metropolitan area. Many industries of national scope have established branches at Atlanta, either for production or for storage and distribution of their goods.
The public-school system comprises (1926) 76 elementary schools, four junior and four senior high schools, with a total enrolment of 56,320. In 1921-22 on the occasion of a special appropriation of $4,000,00o for the development of the school plant, a comprehensive survey of the system was made, and plans were mapped out to meet anticipated needs as far ahead as 1940. The free public library (organized 1899, when the city accepted a double offer from Andrew Carnegie and the Young Men's Library Association) has an annual circulation of over 630,00o volumes. It maintains eight branches, and conducts a school for training librarians, which since 1925 has been affiliated with Emory uni versity. There are 586 churches within the metropolitan area (301 of them maintained by coloured people) representing 20 de nominations. Charitable institutions and agencies, about 4o in number, are financed through a "community chest." Atlanta has many institutions for the higher education of both white and coloured students. The Georgia institute of technology (opened 1888) is a part of the State university (see ATHENS). Oglethorpe university (originally conducted at Midway, destroyed during the Civil War, and reopened at Atlanta in 1916), the alma mater of Sidney Lanier, occupies beautiful blue granite buildings on a campus of 137ac. north of the city. Emory uni versity (founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1914) incorporates Emory college, named after Bishop John Emory of Maryland (d. 1835), which was conducted 1837-1919 at Oxford, Georgia. It has endowments of and its campus of i6oac. is just outside the city, in Druid Hills. Agnes Scott college for women is in the suburb of Decatur (q.v.) and the Georgia military academy is at College park, 7m. to the south-west. Besides the professional schools of the universities there are the Atlanta theological seminary (Congregational), the Atlanta law school, the Atlanta-Southern dental college, the At lanta college of pharmacy and the Southern college of pharmacy. The institutions for coloured students include Atlanta university (founded 1865 by the American Missionary Association), the pioneer in advocating and furnishing opportunities for cultural education for negroes, with which W. E. Burghardt du Bois was associated for many years; Morehouse college, established in Augusta, in 1870, by the Baptist Home Missionary Society; Clark university, founded in 1870 by the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church ; Morris Brown university, founded in 1882 by the African Methodist Episcopal Church; and Gammon theological seminary (Methodist Episcopal) estab lished and endowed in 1883 by Dr. Elijah Gammon.
Three daily newspapers are published : the Constitution (estab lished 1868), edited 188o-89 by Henry W. Grady (1850-89), and from 1889 to his death by Clark Howell (1863-1936) , the Journal and the Georgian.
On Stone Mountain, a hill of naked granite i5m. E. of Atlanta, a magnificent memorial to the Southern Confederacy is under construction. When completed, a military procession of hundreds of figures chiselled in bold relief will sweep across the perpen dicular cliff (800ft. high and 5,000ft. long) on the north side of the mountain, "reviewed" by a central group representing the Confederate High Command, including Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and a colour-bearer. The work was begun by Gutzon Borglum and continued by Augustus Luke man. A vast memorial hall will be quarried out, to serve as a depositary for records and relics of the Confederacy.