East Atlanta, Atlanta — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in East Atlanta?

The Flat Shoals and Glenwood corner anchors East Atlanta, and an old flatiron bank building still marks the junction. West of the village, in adjoining Grant Park, Zoo Atlanta keeps its animal collections while the Atlanta Cyclorama & Civil War Museum turns a vast rotating painting toward the fighting that once swept this ground. Closer in, the Erskine Memorial Fountain and the Beath-Dickey House survive from the streetcar decades.

The Zuber-Jarrell House stands nearby. Its porch reads as pure Atlanta.

What is the history of East Atlanta?

A trade trail once ran through here toward the coast. That path became Flat Shoals. During the Civil War, General James B. McPherson set Union forces on the high ground a mile east of the city, and a cannon was planted at the Glenwood junction to guard the flank of a line that broke across these fields.

East Atlanta recovered as an unincorporated village, and streetcar men laid out the McPherson Park subdivision to fill their line with riders and clerks. The crossroads did the rest.

Where is East Atlanta?

East Atlanta rises on rolling wooded ground on the southeast side of the city, a subtropical pocket of ridge-and-hollow streets that drain toward the crossroads where Flat Shoals meets Glenwood.