Bloglanta

Awhile back I had begun pulling together a series of notes called “Atlanta — how we got here” which I intended to post here on Bloglanta as a brief series. I have always had an interest in the history of Atlanta, particularly of Atlanta’s intown neighborhoods. But even though I’d lived through a great deal of Atlanta’s post WWII decades, I had very little real idea of why the city had taken on the form and character it had.

So I decided to think about and read about the major events and initiatives which had created Atlanta as we know it. The Airport, the expressway system, the Civil Rights movement, the shopping malls, convention centers, art complexes and urban renewal were all areas I wanted to cover. I initially got the idea from reading a book by Atlanta’s former police chief Herbert Jenkins, which had a few paragraphs on why onstreet parking had been removed from 10th Street. By the time he wrote the book, there was already criticism of the effects of turning 10th Street into a heavy traffic arterial. The traditional neighborhood businesses along the street were for the most part killed, and the street rapidly transformed into the patchwork of surface parking and mediocre utility buildings of today. But Jenkins’s explanation for why the policy had been implemented seemed plausable given the particular issues of the time in which he was operating. I wish they hadn’t done it, but it wasn’t nearly as idiotic as it seems in hindsight.

So I hit the books, and I was interested in getting a grasp of the broad traits, events, and trends which made Atlanta what we’re left with today. And of all Atlanta’s characteristics none stands out more than Boosterism.

Boosterism is nothing particularly new. In fact in some ways it’s just the more public face of salesmanship. In the 19th century the leadership of small Midwestern towns became notorious for hyping their towns as the next Chicago. Some of Sinclair Lewis’s best work is parody of these leaders, particularly Babbit and Main Street.

To some extent the Boosterism was directly self-serving, as the realtors in town would use the hype to make sales, which would then benefit the support services in the town.

But to some extent it also grew out of civic pride combined with a desire to build something great and lasting.

The downside of Boosterism is that it’s a fertile field for con artistry, hype, and pomposity. The upside is that it sometime works, and in the case of Atlanta, I’d contend that if it hadn’t been present in abundant supply, we’d be little different from the moribund medium sized cities scattered across the southeast.

There are many good narratives to draw from to demonstrate this trait and it’s effects, but one of the more interesting ones is the story of Mayor William Hartsfield and the Airport. Frederick Allen’s book Atlanta Rising contains a very entertaining and informative account of this defining episode in Atlanta’s history. Hartsfield was a colorful and in some ways comical character. He’d developed a fascination with the budding aviation industry early, and in the 1920s had invested $6,000 in an airshow at tiny Candler Field which evoked outrage when word circulated that the show included tossing a dog with a parachute out of a plane. The show sold out after the rumor circulated.

Cities across the south had been stung by a 1917 essay by HL Mencken describing the south as a thorough cultural wasteland, “the Sahara of the Bozart”. The essay had a particular impact in Atlanta, which even then was beginning to see itself as the New York City of the South.

Hartsfield was elected to the Board of Aldermen in 1922, and made the growth of the airport a life long crusade. He dragged the fiscally conservative administration of Mayor Walter Sims kicking and screaming into the Aviation Age. He went after the lucrative position for Atlanta as part of the federal airmail system, he lobbied the Atlanta business community for both political support and monetary contributions and investment (at one point naming the airport Candler Field,and heaping lavish public praise on the Candler family, in hopes that they would donate clear title of the field to the City of Atlanta). When Birmingham put in a bid for the federal airmail route designation, an assistant postmaster general in charge of inspecting potential airfields was treated like visiting royalty during an Atlanta visit in a general style which would seem corrupt by today’s standards. Likewise, Hartsfield developed relations with reporters for purposes of public relations hype which went far over the line in terms of independence of the press (actually browbeating them when they touted Atlanta’s advantages to the nation insufficiently).

The most notable thing about this in some ways crass and comical tale is that it worked. Whatever criticisms can be levelled against Hartsfield and the other leaders who contributed to the growth of the airport into the economic engine it is today, if they hadn’t done it, Atlanta would quite probably have all the economic vitality, and interest to the nation and region as a whole as Columbia SC or Albany GA.

I’ve presented an upside to Atlanta’s Boosterism here. My next writing will focus on the downside.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 8th, 2005 at 7:08 am and is filed under Looking at the Past. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.