- Urban renewal
- Segregation
- 1963–1967
- City of Atlanta
- General area only
Buttermilk Bottom cleared for the Civic Center
A Black working-class neighborhood in today's Old Fourth Ward, razed in 1965 through federal urban renewal. The Atlanta Civic Center opened on the site in 1967 and the area was renamed Bedford-Pine.
The record
Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. unveiled the redevelopment plans in 1963 and financed them with urban renewal bonds. Demolition came in 1965, and the Civic Center's auditorium and exhibition hall were completed in 1967 (Georgia Exhibits). Wikipedia notes that most of the cleared land stayed empty until mixed-income building began in the mid-1980s. According to Atlanta Housing's archive and Wikipedia, many of the first tenants of Bowen Homes, the 650-unit project opened in 1964 on Bankhead Highway, had been relocated from Buttermilk Bottom. The Planning Atlanta maps show the Buttermilk Bottoms-North Avenue and Bedford-Pine renewal areas block by block.
Today: The Civic Center site, near Renaissance Park and Central Park, is being redeveloped; a senior housing project began in December 2025.
Where on the map: Renewal-area boundaries appear on GSU layers atlpm0021–atlpm0042 (Buttermilk Bottoms) and atlpm0041–atlpm0043h (Bedford-Pine), roughly east of Piedmont Ave around the Civic Center.