From a lion wandering into a downtown drugstore to the disco nightclub that inspired the nickname “Disco Kroger,” Atlanta-based filmmaker Lance Russell brought decades of Atlanta history to life during a recent Buckhead Heritage speaker series event.
Russell, co-creator of the YouTube channel Stories of Atlanta, spoke May 28 at Buckhead Heritage’s monthly speaker series, which highlights people, places and events that have shaped Atlanta’s history. Founded in 2006, Buckhead Heritage works to preserve and promote historic resources throughout the community.
Alongside his daughter and producer, Jennifer Russell, Lance Russell has spent more than a decade producing short videos that uncover lesser-known stories from Atlanta’s past.
“I’m a filmmaker and I produce Stories of Atlanta, a YouTube channel about the history of our city and not as dry as it sounds,” Russell told attendees. “Our videos are short films, told where possible in a ‘rest of the story’ format.”
The idea for “Stories of Atlanta” stemmed from watching “New York: A Documentary Film,” a docuseries about New York’s history that inspired the pair to take a deeper look at their hometown.
While researching Atlanta’s history, Russell said they kept finding “oddities, footnotes, characters, stories that were just too good to leave buried.”
One of the evening’s most memorable moments focused on a photograph filmmaker Joseph Lou took during the aftermath of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Russell described the iconic image showing King’s associates pointing toward the source of the gunfire moments after the shooting and identified several of the people captured in the frame, including Andrew Young, Ralph David Abernathy, Hosea Williams and Jesse Jackson.
Russell also shared stories behind several historic Atlanta images, including a collection of glass-plate photographs documenting downtown buildings before viaduct construction transformed the area and created what would later become Underground Atlanta.
“Before the viaducts were constructed, someone had the foresight to take a camera and photograph all the buildings that were going to be covered over,” Russell said. The photographs survived only because they were discovered and preserved decades later. “That’s how fragile preserving our history can be.”
The presentation also highlighted some of the city’s more unusual stories, including an account of a lion that escaped from a performance at the Bijou Theatre, walked around the corner and calmly entered the Elkin-Watson Drug Company in downtown Atlanta, startling customers inside.
Another audience favorite was a photograph of the Limelight nightclub, the Buckhead disco next to a Kroger dubbed “Disco Kroger.”
“I’m a little confused on current day disco etiquette,” Russell joked. “Are we still denying that we ever set foot in the Limelight or has enough time passed that we can finally admit that we liked the nightlife and we did indeed like to boogie on the Disco Highway?”
Russell also shared stories about the Kimball House hotel, Underground Atlanta, early MARTA stations and the photographs preserved in Georgia State University’s digital archives, encouraging attendees to explore the city’s history through the images and stories hidden in plain sight.
Throughout the presentation, Russell emphasized that “Stories of Atlanta” focuses less on dates and timelines and more on the people, places and unexpected moments that shaped the city.
By the end of the evening, attendees had traveled from the aftermath of King’s assassination to Underground Atlanta, the Limelight, the Kimball House and dozens of other chapters in Atlanta’s past, all through the lens of the stories hidden behind familiar names, photographs and landmarks.
Click here to watch the Stories of Atlanta YouTube channel and learn more about Atlanta’s little-known but fascinating history.
