Old Fourth Ward

The Old Fourth Ward, often abbreviated O4W, is a neighborhood on the east side of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The neighborhood is best known as the location of the Martin Luther King, Jr. historic site.

Geography

The Old Fourth Ward is defined as the area that stretches from Piedmont Avenue and Downtown Atlanta on the west to the BeltLine and the Poncey-Highland and Inman Park neighborhoods on the east. Through it runs a main thoroughfare named simply Boulevard. West of Boulevard the Ward reaches from Ponce de Leon Avenue on the north to Freedom Parkway on the south, below which is Sweet Auburn. East of Boulevard, it reaches from Ponce de Leon Avenue on the north to the east-west MARTA rail line and Oakland Cemetery, and the Grant Park and Cabbagetown neighborhoods on the south. The neighborhood can be divided into three areas, with Freedom Parkway and Boulevard serving as dividing lines.

The area north of Freedom Parkway and east of Boulevard is one of the city's most up-and-coming areas. It is home to The Masquerade, a music venue, and Historic Fourth Ward Park, a product of the BeltLine. In the very northeast corner of this area is the 2.1 million sq. ft. former City Hall East, which a developer, Jamestown, plans to spend $180 million to convert into Ponce City Market, a mixed use development. As a result, there have been several new mulifamily developments bordering the park, including BOHO4W, AMLI Ponce Park, and 755 North.

Fourth Ward

4th Ward may refer to:

Fourth Ward (Atlanta)

Atlanta's Fourth Ward encompassed mainly what is now called the Old Fourth Ward.

1874

A new city charter increased the radius of the city from one to one and a half miles, reduced the number of wards back to five and created a bi-cameral council of two councilmen from each ward and a second body of three at-large aldermen was established.

The new Fourth ward layout was from Pryor and tracks east on Georgia RR to city limits then north west to West Peachtree and south to origin. Two councilmen would be elected from each ward each year.

In late 1875, an ordinance passed where each year one councilman would be elected from each ward for a two year term. The first year, 1876 just had one city-wide alderman and a single councilman from each ward and they would be fully staffed two years later.

1883

On November 5, 1883 a Sixth Ward (beige) was carved out of the Fourth and Fifth Wards. The Fourth lost the entire Peachtree St corridor leaving a district of working class citizens: Germans and Jews to the north and Blacks to the south. Before 1910, the ward had become almost exclusively Black centered on Sweet Auburn and a large portion of it was destroyed in the Great Atlanta fire of 1917.