West End (Atlanta)

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The West End neighborhood of Atlanta is on the National Register of Historic Places and can be found southwest of Castleberry Hill and just north of Oakland City.

It began as an inn called Whitehall and by the 1830s that structure became the area's first post office and voting place. In 1845 when Marthasville, Georgia was renamed Atlanta, voting and postal functions were both moved from Whitehall.

Following the American Civil War the area was home mainly to railway laborers driven out of Atlanta by the high cost of living and as late as 1876 there were only 150 households most of which were laborers (the only well-known name is Jonathan Norcross). By the 1880s many wealthy Atlantans built large estates here and when they came, the main street of Gordon Street became a bustling commercial district.

Growth continued well into the twentieth-century, but the intown problems that Atlanta faced in the 1960s and 1970s hit the West End particularly hard. By the 2000s, much of it still looked blighted but a few bright spots were popping up due to a wave of investment in intown Atlanta beginning to rejuvenate the area. Of particular note was the Candler-Smith Historic Warehouse District, which houses commercial, artist, and residential lofts (some of which were forced to evacuate following a fire in 2005 that killed a mother and two children). The Candler-Smith Historic Warehouses are now know as "The Metropolitan".

The biggest tourist spot here is Joel Chandler Harris's estate called The Wren's Nest and the Mall at West End. It is served by the West End MARTA station and is home to the Atlanta University Center or (AUC) which consists of Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Clark Atlanta University among others.