Atlanta’s oldest public park just expanded its footprint by 10,000 square feet with a new and long-awaited visitor center just outside the Oakland Cemetery gates.
Mayor Andre Dickens joined with cemetery staff and volunteers to officially open the facility at an April 3 ribbon-cutting ceremony, where he called Oakland “one of the liveliest cemeteries in the nation.”
“It’s more than just a cemetery; it’s a celebrated public park, green space, and outdoor museum, if you will,” Dickens said. “It’s a classroom for our children to learn Atlanta’s history, an art museum, and just a gathering place.”
The 173-year-old Oakland Cemetery is a popular destination for tourists and locals alike. Owned by the city and managed by the Historic Oakland Foundation, cemetery staff run programs like plant sales and art installations to bring people through the gates and into the 48-acre green space.
More than 125,000 people visit Oakland Cemetery every year. But the Visitor Center is the largest development since the city started buying up acreage over a hundred years ago. For years, the center was inside the property at the historic bell tower.
Planning for the new center began in 2007, and construction broke ground in 2023. It took years of fundraising through the Living History capital campaign, championed by May B. Hollis and late Mayor Maynard Jackson’s wife Valerie Jackson. The campaign raised $15 million in public and private dollars to pay for a new visitor center, bell tower rehabilitation and beautification of the East Hill section of the cemetery.
“Literally thousands of people and organizations have made the visitor center project possible,” Historic Oakland Foundation CEO Dr. Richard Harker said.
The city invested nearly $2.5 million in Oakland’s historic infrastructure. Dickens said he wanted to “make sure Oakland remains accessible to everyone.”
The new facility includes a three-quarter-acre park, an expanded Oakland Cemetery gift shop, and rooms for small and large meetings. The building is covered in wall-to-wall windows, with balconies overlooking the cemetery on the second floor and a mural along the interior stairwell.
Original plans were critiqued by some for being “boring,” but design group Smith Dalia Architects said it was intentional to create a building that was “deferential” to the cemetery.
In a public statement, the project designers said that the visitor center is not about the building itself but is the “lens through which to focus the experience.”
Historic Oakland Foundation Board of Directors Chair Kavin Manickaraj said the center was designed to be a “warm and inviting space” for all. The nonprofit toyed with mimicking the Victorian style of the cemetery, but cost restrictions and logistics concerns halted the plan.
Manickaraj said the team wanted to create a “balance” between old and new. Rather than create a building for fans of Victorian architecture, he wanted the new center to guide people through easily.
“Walking through those gates can be intimidating,” Manickaraj said.
The board chair said the “complicated” cemetery history might discourage some from visiting. With airy walls and a modern design, the center is set squarely in the present — and exists outside the cemetery walls to be more accessible to guests.
But the building still has some hints of the Oakland Cemetery spirit. The exterior is made of the same red bricks as the cemetery walls, and several reclaimed pieces are used in the interior. The gift shop shelves are made from reclaimed pine trees, and the men’s bathroom has reclaimed tiles from Southwest Atlanta’s shuttered Nabisco factory.
“From the ground up, we care about how we do things,” Manickaraj said.
The foundation also opted for simpler designs to minimize environmental impacts.
Manickaraj said the center is on track to receive Southface’s EarthCraft Net Zero building certification. The chair said he wanted to make sure the building would sustain years to come.
Now that it’s open, the Oakland Cemetery Visitor Center will be a hub for nonprofit-led events like “EJ Jams,” an environmental justice-oriented night of poetry, comedy, and music. The cemetery will also use the center for popular events like Illumine, an annual arts event that lights up the cemetery starting April 17.
Manickaraj hopes the visitor center will become a long-term community meeting place for nonprofits, neighborhood groups and more. He pointed to the ampersand in the cemetery’s logo, which had been changed to “Oakl&nd.” For him, the rebrand signifies that Oakland is about more than just the burial grounds. It’s his message to current and future guests.
“Let’s make this more than the space you thought it was,” Manickaraj said.
