Atlanta's first streetcar suburb

Inman Park (proper) was planned in the late 1880s by Joel Hurt, a civil engineer and real-estate developer who intended to create a rural oasis connected to the city by the first of Atlanta's electric streetcar lines, along Edgewood Avenue. The East Atlanta Land Company acquired and developed more than 130 acres east of the city and Hurt named the new suburb for his friend and business associate, Samuel M. Inman. Joseph Forsyth Johnson was hired as landscape designer for Inman Park who included curvilinear street designs and liberal usage of open spaces in his planning.^[3][4][5]

Robert Winship home, 1896

Beath-Dickey House, 1896

Phil Haralson home, 1896

George Edward King home, 1896

The Atlanta Constitution in 1896 grandly described Inman Park:

High up above the city, where the purest breezes and the brightest sunshine drove away the germs of disease, and where nature had lavished her best gifts, the gentlemen who conceived the thought of Inman Park found the locality above all others which they desired. It was to be a place of homes, of pretty homes, green lawns, and desirable inhabitants. And all save those who would make desirable residents have been excluded. ... It's the prettiest, highest, healthiest and most desirable locality I ever saw. Everybody is friendly and neighborly. ... And as far as accessibility it ranks second to no residence portion of the city. We have three car lines and frequent schedules.^[6]

Like new developments throughout the United States at the time, but in stark contrast to the attitudes prevalent in the neighborhood today, Inman Park was conceived of and promoted as a segregated community.

Moreland Park was by contrast developed as a more traditional, incremental building of sub-divisions as opposed to the grand plan for Inman Park proper.

Decline

Sketches of three Inman Park houses, 1895; Ernest Woodruff's house at top; Beath-Dickey House at bottom

The arrival of the automobile allowed upper class Atlantans to live in suburbs farther north from downtown workplaces, such as Morningside and what is now considered Buckhead. Inman Park became less fashionable and the exuberant Victorian architecture came to seem dated. The mansions came to be subdivided into apartments.

Similar to other intown neighborhoods such as Virginia Highland, Inman Park fell to blight during the white middle and upper class exodus to the northern suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s, and was:

an economically depressed neighborhood of mostly blue-collar white folks, elderly couples who could not afford to move out and families on disability and welfare. They lived in rented bungalows or big houses chopped up into tiny roach-infested apartments.^[7]

Atlanta's first intown neighborhood to gentrify

Driving through the neighborhood on his way to appraise stained glass windows in the doomed home of Judge Durwood T. Pye on Poplar Circle, Robert Griggs was smitten by the extraordinary architecture of the Beath-Dickey House, then a dilapidated multi-unit rental property. He and his partner, Robert Aiken, bought the house and restored it to a single-family dwelling. They were followed by others who restored homes; founded Inman Park Restoration, the neighborhood association; and created a neighborhood newsletter, a garden club to rehabilitate public spaces, and a pre-school.^[8] To publicize the progress they were making, they began a Tour of Homes with a small festival, which has grown into the hugely popular Inman Park Festival, held each spring.

Freeway revolt against I-485

During this same period, there was an intense fight against the I-485 freeway which was to be built through the neighborhood, although many properties in Inman Park, as well as the entire neighboring neighborhood of Copenhill, were torn down in preparation for freeway construction.

Inman Park today

After decades of restoration and renewal, Inman Park is now regarded as a highly desirable intown neighborhood with a mixture of rental and owner-occupied houses and condominiums. Built up as it was over decades, the neighborhood housing now ranges from tiny mill town shotguns to the Victorian mansions of the original development, intermixed with bungalows of all sizes built during the first three decades of the 20th century. Like its housing, the makeup of Inman Park has changed since its inception, with a population that is 25% non-white and of varying economic levels—although increasing housing prices are beginning to force more economic homogeneity.^[9] Since the beginning of its renewal, inclusivity and a strong sense of community have distinguished Inman Park. The neighborhood association has always welcomed renters and homeowners alike, with nominal annual dues, while the Inman Park Festival, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors every spring, brings residents together to produce the largest all-volunteer festival in Georgia. The Festival's centerpiece is the Tour of Homes, which showcases the wide variety of sizes and types of residences in the neighborhood.

Former industrial areas on the west side of the neighborhood have been redeveloped into mixed-use complexes. The former General Pipe and Foundry site is now North Highland Steel and the Mead paper plant site is now Inman Park Village. In the early 1990s the former Atlanta Stove Works was transformed by swapping out two letters of its name and became the Atlanta Stage Works, a film and media production center that eventually housed the early Tyler Perry film studios and the National AIDS Quilt. In 2015 it was converted into a mixed-use office and restaurant space, to be added to the space across Krog Street to form the Krog Street Market.