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Atlanta
is a major commercial center and is the home of several major enterprises,
including Delta Airlines, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, UPS and CNN. At the
same time, Atlanta is of the major centers of the American civil rights
movement. Martin Luther King was born in the city, and his boyhood
home on Auburn Avenue in the Sweet Auburn district is preserved by
the National Park Service as a National Historic Site; his final resting
place is in the tomb at the center of the reflecting pool at The King
Center.
Atlanta
is a lively , thriving city, the capital of Georgia, and a center
of commerce and the arts. Many fortune 500 companies have corporate
or regional headquarters in Atlanta, and young professionals are moving
there in ever increasing numbers.Many
visitors come to Atlanta looking for the Old South stereotypes: white
columned mansions surrounded by magnolias and owned by languidly moving,
elegantly dressed ladies wearing white gloves and hoop skirts, and
speaking in a southern drawl.. What they find is much more cosmopolitan
and a lot more interesting, though it is still possible to relax with
a glass of lemonade under a peach tree. Atlanta has spent the last
135 years building what has been described as the Capital of the New
South and the Next Great International City.
Atlanta is the city of Martin Luther King, Jr., father of one of the
country's most important social revolutions, and of Ted Turner, who
brought the world a revolution of another sort. The dramatic downtown
skyline, with its gleaming skyscrapers, is testimony to Atlanta's
inability to sit still, even for a minute. And its role as host for
the Centennial Olympic Games in 1996 (it had already hosted Super
Bowl XXVIII in 1994 and the Democratic National Convention in 1988)
finally convinced the rest of the world that Atlanta is a force to
be reckoned with as well as a great place to visit.
Consistently ranked as one of the best cities in the world in which
to do business, Atlanta is headquarters for hundreds of corporations,
including Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, UPS, Holiday Inn, Georgia-Pacific,
Home Depot, and BellSouth and Cox Communications. A major convention
city and a crossroads where three interstate highways converge, it's
home to the country's second busiest airport and is the shopping capital
of the Southeast. Although the city limits are only 131 square miles,
the metro area is vast and sprawling. With 3.5 million in population
and still counting, there seems to be no limit to its growth.
There are major art, science, nature, and archaeology museums, a vibrant
theater community, an outstanding symphony, a well-regarded ballet
company, opera, blues, jazz, Broadway musicals, a presidential library,
Confederate and African-American heritage sites, and dozens of art
galleries.
Add to that entertainment attractions such as Georgia's Stone Mountain
Park, a regional theme park, a botanical garden, and major league
sports teams, and you have the ingredients for a family friendly city.
The culinary spectrum ranges from grits and biscuits to caviar and
sushi. Fried chicken and barbecue are available, but Atlanta also
serves up Thai, Ethiopian, and Russian cuisine.
The 1960's saw the beginning of downtown development with the rise
of the million-square-foot Merchandise Mart, designed by an innovative
young Atlanta architect named John Portman. It became the nucleus
for the nationally renowned Peachtree Center complex. Portman's futuristic
design for the downtown Hyatt Regency in 1967 introduced a towering
atrium-lobby concept that at the time was considered to be quite revolutionary.
Today, Peachtree Center, a 14-city-block "pedestrian village," contains
three Portman designed megahotels as well as the Atlanta Market Center,
200,000 square feet of retail space, many restaurants, and six massive
office towers. Its various elements are connected by covered walkways
and bridges. MARTA rapid-transit trains began running in 1979, and
today most of Atlanta: city center and vast suburbs, is accessible
by bus or subway.
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In
1980, a revitalized black neighborhood called Sweet Auburn became a
National Historic District, its 10 blocks of notable sites including
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s boyhood home, the church where he preached,
a museum, and the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social
Change. It is probably the major black history attraction in the country,
and in the last several years, has undergone a major revitalization
and restoration.
Media mogul Ted Turner inaugurated CNN in Atlanta in 1980, following
with Superstation TBS, Headline News, and TNT. The High Museum of Art
opened its doors in 1983. In 1989, Underground Atlanta, a retail/restaurant/entertainment
complex with a historical theme, came into being.
The city prepared for the 1996 Olympic Games with new parks, hotels,
and sports venues. In the center of downtown is Woodruff Park, which
recently underwent a $5 million renovation. The Olympic Village, erected
just north of the central business district, now provides housing for
Georgia State University students. South of the Olympic Village and
stretching to CNN Center is the 21-acre Centennial Olympic Park: a major
gathering place during the Olympics, with its dramatic Olympic Ring
fountain, lawns, and gardens. Reopened in 1998, it regularly hosts concerts,
street festivals and other cultural events and anchors the city's efforts
to revitalize commercial and residential development in a once neglected
corner of downtown. The Olympic Stadium, the site of the opening and
closing ceremonies as well as the track and field events, has been reincarnated
as Turner Field, home of the Atlanta Braves baseball team.
Currently the spotlight in Atlanta is not on growth and how to encourage
it, but on growth and how to manage it. This has resulted in major improvements
in transportation and in restoration of the historic and downtown areas.
Atlanta's arts community has deep roots. The Atlanta Ballet is the oldest
Ballet Company in America. Visitors come to Atlanta for a taste of the
South and find they have discovered an international flavor. Atlanta's
position as the cultural capital of the South affords patrons an array
of options. The presence of both traditional and experimental arts organizations
means that neither the classics nor avant-garde works are neglected.
A typical year's offerings include traditional Shakespeare, symphony
and grand opera as well as child and adult-oriented puppet theater,
post-modern psychological drama and alternative productions of well-known
works.
There are a wide selection of offerings in the visual arts too. Besides
the architecturally renowned High Museum of Art, Emory University's
Michael C. Carlos Museum and The High Museum of Art Folk Art and Photography
Galleries, the city has many private and public galleries that sponsor
a variety of artists and styles. Traditional, primitive and modern painting,
sculpture, studio crafts, drawing, and photography are part of the wealth
of artistic offerings on view at any given time.
Atlanta enjoys four definite seasons. Warm summers and mild winters
allow nearly year round golfing, fishing and outdoor living. The Stone
Mountain nightly laser show and the park's many recreational opportunities
keep millions of visitors coming back. Nightlife is hopping at Buckhead
where young sophisticates gather for dancing to great music until 4:00AM.
Families keep a lively pace visiting the bounty of fun -filled and educational
offerings from the Atlanta zoo to Cyclorama and SciTrek. There is no
limit that can be placed on the possibilities of an Atlanta vacation!
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