Figure B-9: Bessie Woods Mission, 123 Cain Street (Andrew Young International Boulevard) Courtesy of Auburn Avenue Research Library
The early days of Buttermilk Bottom, around 1890, twenty years after this area was first settled by white Atlantans, in the area near Tanyard Branch, is where Black Atlantans lived in framed houses. 90 Those streets were known as Williams, Mills, Hunnicutt, Venable, McAfee, Fowler, Plum, and Pine Streets during this period. The housing did not have sanitation, the streets were not paved, and there were not streetlights. These residents were the workforce of the city and mostly served the stately homes along Peachtree Street, which was the ‘fashionable’ place to live located near the Governor’s Mansion at Peachtree Street and Cain (Andrew Young International Boulevard). Black communities tended to be multi-class due to laws of segregation, the housing racial exclusion zones pre-determined where Black people were not permitted to live or to develop housing, and the overall inadequate housing supply in Atlanta from the 1900s to the modern era. 91 Over time, as housing stock aged and new construction emerged to accommodate middle-class Black residents, from the 1930s to the 1940s Black Atlantans moved to the westside. 92 Buttermilk Bottom increasingly became a predominantly Black neighborhood starting in the late 1930s through the early 1940s as middle class White families moved into neighborhoods east and north of downtown. 93 The Fourth Ward, like other Black neighborhoods in Atlanta such as Summerhill, Pittsburgh, and Mechanicsville, also reflected this demographic shift. 94 Zoning did not become a practice until the 1920s and development was determined by the builder and neighborhoods were built up for density with of mixture of residential and commercial districts intermingled and dispersed together throughout Buttermilk
90 “Techwood Neighborhood: Social History Base Map Survey of Atlanta, Georgia, 1939.), Works Projects Administration of Georgia. 91 LeeAnn Lands 92
93
94 A. J. Taylor, “Oral History Interview with A.J. Taylor.” Interview by P. Wilson, P. Carter, M. Simmon, Auburn Avenue Research Library, May 29, 1978, Tape #10.
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