neighborhood, then moved north towards Forrest Avenue, shifting from Bedford Place up to North Avenue, creating a western boundary. The fire formed an eastern boundary as well, extending from Hillard to Edgewood, Jackson to Irwin, and Boulevard and Howell up to Ponce de Leon Avenue. Wood-frame houses small and large, commercial spaces, and churches were ravaged. About 10,000 people were left homeless and destitute and many camped in Piedmont Park, churches, and other spaces. Only $500,000 of the $5.5 million in property damage was insured. 80 The community was. Left in desolation, the overall livability was affected for most residents. For the sections in Fourth Ward that did not catch on fire, the areas were covered in ash. Residents on Angier Avenue reported of the ash, the reignition of flames that occurred a week after the fire was reportedly put out, and the ecological loss of old growth trees. The severity of the scorched earth is profound as the land has yet to recover. After the Fire another round of rapid redevelopment began, some sections the development was done “without much concern” and without oversight. 81 The Great Fire was an inflection point and created change for both Black and White residents living in or near neighborhoods like Buttermilk Bottom and Butler Street. The migration of Black people to the west side of Atlanta near former Hunter Avenue now Martin Luther King Jr Drive and its surrounding area. This resettlement allowed for a second Black business and commercial district to blossom. 82 For White residents, the decision was to either move out of the area or strategize to deepen racial restrictions and enforce a new design aesthetic. For example, historian LeeAnn Lands, discussed the tactics attempted by White middle and upper-class residents to remake Jackson Hill in North Fourth Ward into a suburban park-neighborhood. 83 Park- neighborhoods, like Druid Hills, were designed according to a specific aesthetic that connoted wealth and exclusion– single-family homes, curvilinear streets, a deep set- back (the distance from the street), and sited in a “seemingly” a natural setting, outlined by Lands. 84 Auburn Avenue lost a number of residences, which were never replaced. Instead after the fire, businesses and cultural centers repopulated Auburn Avenue; Piedmont Avenue intersects with Auburn Avenue and transitioned from being a majority residential landscape with a few businesses, like Citizens Trust Bank and Murdock Brothers Funeral Home, to a street that predominately catered to entrepreneurs and commercial enterprises. 85
80 Auburn Avenue Chronicle 1 , (1978).
81 Wood, “The Bedford Pine Neighborhood.” p. 8 82 Skip Mason, “Hunter Street: Remembering the Legacy- Part 1”, The Atlanta Daily World .
83 LeeAnn Lands, “The Culture of Property.” , p. 49, 84 LeeAnn Lands, “The Culture of Property.” , p. 49. 85 Coombs, interview.
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