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Frances Boyd

Memorial Drive–A Memoir and a Memorable Alanta Corridor

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Anyone who lived in Atlanta in the 50’s and 60’s was very familiar with Memorial Drive. During those decades, Atlanta was still a city, barely on the cusp of becoming the metropolis it is today, and people were familiar with the many neighborhoods spiraling outward from the gold-plated Capitol dome. Memorial Drive was a vital east-west corridor linking East Lake, Kirkwood, Edgewood, Grant Park, Cabbagetown, Reynoldstown, and more with downtown Atlanta.  The road stretched from downtown Atlanta all the way to Stone Mountain.

Natasha Trethewey’s connection to Memorial Drive was a personal one. Trethewey is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet who lived in an apartment along Memorial Drive in the 80’s and was tramautized by the murder of her mother by her step-father. She writes of the murder in the second half of her memoir, but the first part is a look at her life before that, in Mississippi as the child of a white man and a Black mother. Reviewers of the book have praised Trethewey’s ability to write vividly and passionately about the racism she experienced in her childhood and how it shaped her poetry. Fast forward to her mother’s second marriage and her life in Atlanta when the book takes on the aura of a mystery story that propels the reader toward a climax already known but shocking all the same.

Memorial Drive is a book that goes far beyond the typical memoir. The reader doesn’t have to be connected with Atlanta or racism or the loss of one’s mother by murder to be totally immersed in Trethewey’s story. It is powerful and heartfelt, beautifully written with glimpses of joy, love and sorrow.

Natasha Trethewey, poet and author

For those interested in Memorial Drive, the road, these photos show the metamorphosis it is experiencing. Enjoy.

A photo of how Construction bustles near Memorial Drive’s intersection with the forthcoming Eastside Trail extension.
Construction bustles near Memorial Drive’s intersection with the forthcoming Eastside Trail extension. 

The State Judicial Complex is going vertical at Capital Gateway Park off Memorial Drive, just down the street from the Georgia State Capitol. At $122 million, it’s the most expensive building ever put forth by the State of Georgia, set to accommodate Georgia’s expanded Court of Appeals and Supreme Court. Estimated completion: August 2019. 
The Leonard (left) and the newer George Apartments consumer more than two blocks of real estate closer to Memorial’s downtown reaches. The latter’s site was the longtime home of Azar’s Liquor Store until 2015.
The rising Platform apartments can be seen from Memorial, just one block over. Expect 325 rentals here soon. 
The Reserve at Grant Park is coming along, next door to Paces Properties’s adaptive-reuse The Larkin.
Nearing the Boulevard intersection, The Larkin—slogan: “Main Street in Your Backyard”—is starting to fill in with only ancillary construction left to go on the Grant Park property. The majority is already open, with offerings ranging from wood-fired pizza, kale, and ramen to oral surgery. 
How The Larkin retained some esthetics of the site’s old buildings.
Just east of Boulevard, the recently opened Grindhouse Killer Burgers counts a patio that’s killer indeed. 
Little has changed since last we visited the proposed site of 764 Memorial, a five-story condo venture with a smattering of townhomes. Developers said in March that half of the condos (priced from the $200,000s) had sold, with delivery expected as early as this fall. The site’s been a tomb of busted construction plans since the recession. 
Across the street is the apartment component of another major Paces’s venture on Memorial, Atlanta Dairies.
Atlanta Dairies’s adaptive-reuse components especially have experienced hiccups, but developers expect residences and retail could begin to deliver later this year. 
Construction moves up the block near 841 Memorial, from which Memorial’s roller-coaster topography is visible. 
Hard to miss the newish 841 Memorial Apartments with the Play at Wagalot sign.
It’s not the end of Memorial’s metamorphosis, but today we’ll conclude at a $250 million project that could ultimately be the corridor’s most significant agent of change: Fuqua Development’s Madison Yards. Anchored by Publix and AMC Theatre, the redevelopment of Leggett & Platt manufacturing in Reynoldstown is expected to bring some 550 residences, 80,000 square feet of loft office space, 160,000 square feet of retail, and plenty of parking.

Photos taken from:

13 photos: Memorial Drive’s impressive metamorphosis today 

Along one of Atlanta’s most rapidly changing corridors, a photographic tour from downtown to Reynoldstown By Josh Green@JoshGreen1234  May 16, 2018, 8:00am EDT

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