At the intersection of Memorial Drive and Boulevard sits Oakland Cemetery, the City of Atlanta’s first official burial grounds. Established in 1850 on an original six acres of land, Oakland now spans 48 acres and ...
Much of our knowledge of Civil War Atlanta comes from the work of the official photographer of the Army of the Mississippi, George Barnard. Assigned to document military camps, fortifications and rail lines, Barnard followed ...
May Irwin was a 19th century actress who starred – with John Rice – in an 1896 short film titled The Kiss. Chances are you are not familiar with The Kiss – or Ms. Irwin ...
For a species born without wings, we sure have spent a great deal of time trying to learn to fly. The desire to fly is probably as much a part of being human as is ...
When the Civil War ended in 1865, life, as you can imagine, did not just magically return to normal. There was no “normal.” Chaos was the order of the day and the State of Georgia ...
In his epic work “The Souls of Black Folk,” WEB DuBois seems to describe the City of Atlanta in terms that separate Atlanta from what is generally considered to be a traditional Southern city. “South ...
The name Martin Amorous is not one that most Atlantans associate with the development of the City of Atlanta but that doesn’t diminish his contribution to the well-being of our city, not in the least. ...
Any city that attains any sort of momentum attracts interesting visitors…some famous, some not so much. And every visitor to Atlanta comes with a story and this week we were going to tell just such ...
Even Atlanta, with it comparatively young history, is not without its colorful characters. And one of Atlanta’s more interesting individuals was Jasper Newton Smith. Smith was an Atlanta businessman during the city’s reconstruction days. He ...
Most people, when giving a tour of the City of Atlanta to friends or family, usually find themselves starting more than one sentence with the phrase, “On this spot…” It’s pretty much a necessity in ...
Of all of the legendary names who were instrumental in building Atlanta into one of the nation’s premiere metropolitan regions, the name Carl G. Fisher is not one of them…but perhaps it should be. One ...
It will come as no surprise to anyone that Peachtree Street was not always the bastion of business that it is today. At the turn of the 20th century, Peachtree Street was a tree-lined avenue ...
There are many facets that make up a successful community, city or state, but without question, one of the most important elements, if not the most important element, is people. It’s hard to have a ...
They say it’s the journey, not the destination. And for some in the 1950s and 60s whose destination was Atlanta, the journey was more than mere conveyance, it was, in fact, Southern Tradition. For many, ...
There are few better examples of the value of long-term planning than Atlanta’s airport. Atlanta did not blindly stumble into its status as an aviation powerhouse; it got there purposefully, thanks to the forward thinking ...
For time after the Civil War, Atlantans found themselves living under military occupation. In fact, the government built barracks close to downtown which housed Federal troops for that specific purpose. You probably know the name, ...
There is something undeniably compelling about the shared experience. It’s a human thing. We all have it, that need to be with others. A neuroscientist could probably offer a pretty strong biological reason for what ...
There was a time when movie-goers had a number of choices in downtown Atlanta. From the Loew’s Grand and the Paramount to the 81 and the Roxy, the options on Peachtree Street were plentiful. In ...
They say the human eye can distinguish upwards of 7-million different colors. With so many options, it makes one wonder just how picky must Steve Jobs have been that he had to design his own ...
One of the challenges of our 21st century lifestyle is trying to process the unprecedented amount of information available at any given moment. We are subjected to so much input on so many different topics ...
Lance Russell
Lance Russell is an Atlanta-based filmmaker and media communicator who, for over three decades, has been entrusted by clients to tell their stories. A seasoned producer with an innate ability to cut to the heart of the matter, Lance’s instincts are tailor-made for today’s “media bite” culture. Brief, poignant and always entertaining, Lance’s current passion is bringing Atlanta’s colorful and inspiring past to life with his “rest of the story” style video series, Stories of Atlanta. “History’s best communicators,” says Lance, “have always been storytellers. It’s in our DNA. ‘Once upon a time’ is how we got to where we are now.”
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