Hurt Park (Atlanta)
Hurt Park is a small park in Downtown Atlanta in the triangle between Edgewood Avenue, Courtland Street, and Gilmer Street. It opened in 1939. It is named after banker, real estate and streetcar developer Joel Hurt.
When Hurt Park opened in 1940, it was the first park in downtown Atlanta since the 1860s and represented one of the great achievements of Mayor William B. Hartsfield’s first administration. The park was part of a 1937-1942 "transformation of its aging Municipal Auditorium and the surrounding area into a civic center that befitted Atlanta’s rising status as a convention center".[1]
The park and its fountain were funded in part by the Woodruff Foundation and were designed by the noted landscape architect William C. Pauley.
They were one of downtown Atlanta's principal attractions during the 1940s and 1950s.
Fountain of Light
The park houses the "Fountain of Light", which used to light the water in different patterns and colors:
"An electric fountain with seventy-eight bulbs from one hundred watts to fifteen hundred. It plays for twenty minutes at a time, giving numerous changes of pattern and color before it repeats its rainbow symphony. It was built at a cost of seventeen hundred dollars, and designed by Atlanta sculptor Julian Harris and presented to the city through the Emily and Ernest Woodruff Foundation."[2]
The fountain is still present in the park, but without the light show.
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