- Lost neighborhood
- Segregation
- 1921 to mid-1950s
- City of Atlanta
- General area only
Macedonia Park (Bagley Park), Buckhead
A Black subdivision in Buckhead whose residents worked in the surrounding white households. Fulton County bought it out and condemned it in the 1940s and 1950s, and the land became a park.
The record
Black families lived in the area from the 1870s. In 1921 white banker John Sheffield Owens developed a 27-acre subdivision there for African Americans along Bagley Road; residents worked as maids, laundresses, chauffeurs, yardmen, caddies and mill hands. In 1940 the county health board cited a condemned spring and ordered homeowners to install septic systems at their own cost. In 1944 the county set aside $50,000 to buy or condemn the lots for a park, paying $450–1,000 a lot and sometimes renting homes back on 30 days' notice. White civic groups demanded the area be cleared for a playground 'for the benefit of [white] children', although a 1948 grand jury called a park there unnecessary. Atlanta Magazine puts the community at about 50 families when it was removed, between the mid-1940s and mid-1950s; the park opened as Bagley Park in 1955 and was renamed for Frankie Allen in 1980.
Today: Frankie Allen Park, a city park in Buckhead's Garden Hills area.
Where on the map: The 27-acre tract in District 17, Land Lot 60 now occupied by Frankie Allen Park.