Atlanta

Atlanta existed because of railroads. It began in 1837 as the end of a line — the original name was Terminus — and it mattered in the Civil War for exactly that reason. Four railroads met here, and whoever held it controlled supply for the lower South.

Sherman took the city in September 1864 and burned the military and industrial districts in November before beginning the March to the Sea. The photographs made in the weeks between are unusual: George Barnard worked in the occupied city and produced images of the defensive works, the wrecked rolling stock and the roundhouse that are among the most technically accomplished of the war.

The rebuilding was fast and the city adopted a phoenix as its symbol, which tells you how deliberately the story was managed. By 1868 Atlanta was the state capital.

The Cotton States and International Exposition of 1895 was the announcement that the rebuilding had worked. Nearly eight hundred thousand people attended. It is remembered now chiefly for Booker T. Washington's speech, delivered on the opening day, which set the terms of a debate that ran for decades.

Photographs of Peachtree Street across the following thirty years show the same view getting taller. The Flatiron Building here predates the New York one by a year, and locals point that out.

The railroads remain the underlying subject. The tracks ran through the center at grade, which meant the downtown was cut in half by them, and the viaducts built over the tracks in the 1920s created the buried streets that later became Underground Atlanta. Photographs from before the viaducts show a city organized entirely around the rail corridor.

Just over a thousand images in the archive name Atlanta.

The Third-Largest City in America, Until It Voted Not to Be