Grove Park neighborhood has a history of family and burgeoning business.
Dr. Edwin Wiley Grove, a wealthy pharmaceutical businessman, was the president of the Grove Park Development company that built Atkins Park near Virginia-Highland in northeast Atlanta and the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC, and other neighborhoods across the southeast.
Beginning in the 1920s, the Grove Park Development Company joined with other developers to expand and cultivate the area in Atlanta once known as Fortified Hills into the Grove Park neighborhood.
Edwin Grove used names from his family for the various streets: his second wife Gertrude, his daughter Evelyn, and his son Edwin. Other possibilities for street names include his grandchildren Matilda, Emily, Francis, Margret, and others.
Many of the side streets were further developed in the 1930s, 1940s, and 50s with wide, tree-lined avenues and frame cottages, brick Tudors, and ranch houses.
Originally a race-restricted community subject to mortgage red-lining practices, Grove Park was an all-white neighborhood prior to 1960. African Americans began to move into the neighborhood during the early 60s due to growth in the Collier Heights neighborhood, which had been developed through a public-private effort of the Atlanta Black community.
Bankhead Highway was named after Alabama congressman John Hollis Bankhead, a segregationist. While the early Atlanta hip-hop culture used the name Bankhead, the highway name was changed in 1998 to Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway.
Grove Park enjoyed its economic and cultural splendor during the 60s and into the early 1970s. However, white flight started to drain the area’s population and economic investment. Subsequently, many long-time businesses closed and were replaced with lower rent business. The population decreased, and the area saw a decline in property conditions and the local economy.
Decades of disinvestment, the closure of public housing developments, and ultimately the mortgage fraud crisis of 2008 continued to take a toll on the community and its residents until the Great Recession in 2008, when the neighborhood’s population dropped and the economic infrastructure was disproportionally impacted, bringing school closures and a loss of commerce. Even today, Grove Park has no supermarket, no bank, and no pharmacy. No local restaurants give the neighborhood character and inspiration.
But with organizations, businesses, and residents ready to invest in the community again, Grove Park is poised to make a comeback, and Grove Park Foundation is at the forefront of the neighborhood’s resurgence. As a member of Purpose Built Communities Network, Grove Park Foundation empowers the people of Grove Park to partner with programs, resources, and nonprofits to build a healthy, equitable, and economically vibrant community. Working together, we can realize a new, stronger, prosperous Grove Park.
Grove Park
