Beneath the 2015 incarnation of this bohemian neighborhood lies a storied past. What is now Flat Shoals Avenue—home to craft-beer bars, intimate music venues, and inventive restaurants—used to be the Sandtown Trail, a Creek Indian trading route. And where now Craftsman bungalows dot the residential streets, cannons and rifles once roared among the old-growth oaks during the Battle of Atlanta. Situated three miles east of downtown, East Atlanta melds the historic and the contemporary with a dose of independent-minded swagger, appealing equally to the weekend party crowd, 30-something professionals, families with kids, and long-time residents who still tend their gardens and water their lawns, watching the ebbs and flows of the diverse and dynamic neighborhood they all call home.
The forests of East Atlanta bore witness to the Civil War long before they were criss-crossed by today’s streets. On July 21, 1864, amidst the confusion of a late-breaking Confederate attack, General James Birdseye McPherson, commanding officer of the Union ranks, received a fatal rifle blast through his back as he attempted a hasty retreat. McPherson’s death marked the lone high point in the Confederate’s sound defeat in the following days, as the Union marched onward toward the sea. McPherson’s death is commemorated at the terminus of Monument Avenue by the upright cannon, a historical marker plaque, and well-tended landscaping that keeps the memorial blooming most months of the year.
