East Lake, Atlanta:

The Neighborhood That Refused to Stay Down

By Shawn Morgan | Compass Atlanta

Let's be honest — most Atlantans have driven past East Lake on the way somewhere else. Maybe you caught a glimpse of the gorgeous golf course from Memorial Drive and thought, 'Nice. Keep it moving.' If that's you, we need to talk — because East Lake is hands-down one of the most fascinating, complex, and flat-out remarkable neighborhoods in this entire city. It's a story of glory, gut-wrenching decline, and one of the most extraordinary turnarounds in American urban history. Buckle up.

From Plantation Land to Playground of the Élite

Long before East Lake was a neighborhood, it was a 19th-century plantation owned by Lt. Col. Robert Augustus Alston — a journalist, legislator, and, as history would have it, a man with enemies. His antebellum estate, Meadow Nook, built in 1856 for his South Carolina bride, still stands today directly across from the East Lake Golf Club. Remarkably, it survived General Sherman's scorched-earth march through Atlanta during the Civil War, making it the second-oldest home in the entire city of Atlanta. That alone earns East Lake some serious bragging rights.

Fast forward to 1892: the East Lake Land Company carved the old plantation into residential lots, added a streetcar line, and officially opened Atlanta's front door to suburban living. Within a decade, the Atlanta Athletic Club snapped up an abandoned amusement park on the site and transformed it into Atlanta's very first golf course. What had been a penny arcade and a steamboat-ride lake became the stomping grounds of Atlanta's most powerful businessmen — and one very important kid named Bobby Jones.

By 1912, an auto road connected East Lake to Ponce de Leon Avenue, and suddenly everyone wanted in. Lawn bowling, tennis, boating, swimming — East Lake had it all. In 1916, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that demand for East Lake homes had reached 'almost boom proportions.' The neighborhood was officially annexed into the City of Atlanta in 1928, sealing its place as one of the city's premier addresses.

Bobby Jones, the Grand Slam, and a Legend Born on These Fairways

You simply cannot tell the story of East Lake without giving proper reverence to Robert Tyre Jones Jr. — Bobby Jones — arguably the greatest amateur golfer who ever lived. East Lake Golf Club was his home course, the place where he first swung a club as a child and where he ultimately ended his legendary career. In 1930, Jones accomplished something that had never been done before and has never been done since: he won all four major golf championships in a single calendar year — the Grand Slam. Then, at the age of 28, he retired from competitive golf forever. He later co-founded a little tournament in Augusta. You may have heard of it: The Masters.

Bobby Jones didn't just put East Lake on the map — he put Atlanta on the global sporting stage. The East Lake Golf Club hosted the 1963 Ryder Cup, one of the most prestigious international team competitions in the sport, cementing the neighborhood's reputation as hallowed ground for golf. That history, combined with a masterful course restoration by designer Rees Jones in the 1990s, is exactly why the PGA TOUR's TOUR Championship — the season finale featuring the top 30 players in the world — has called East Lake home since 1998.

'Little Vietnam': When East Lake Hit Rock Bottom

Here's where the story takes a turn no one would have written on purpose. By the 1960s, white flight was decimating intown Atlanta neighborhoods, and East Lake was no exception. In 1960, the neighborhood was over 99% white. By 1980, that number had flipped to 95% Black — not because of anything inherently wrong, but because Atlanta's suburban exodus left intown communities starved of investment and resources.

In 1968, the Atlanta Athletic Club sold its beloved East Lake property and relocated to the suburbs. The No. 2 golf course — the second of the club's two courses — was sold to developers and converted into East Lake Meadows, a sprawling public housing project that opened in the early 1970s. What followed was a descent that shocked even hardened Atlantans. By the mid-1990s, East Lake Meadows had a crime rate 18 times the national average. Residents called it 'Little Vietnam.' Businesses fled. Families who could leave, did. The neighborhood was, in every practical sense, abandoned.

But here's the part that gets left out of the glossy revitalization stories: through it all, there were residents who stayed, who organized, and who refused to give up on their community. Eva Davis, a grandmother and tenacious community activist, founded the East Lake Meadows Residents' Association and began connecting neighbors one door at a time. She would become one of the most important figures in the neighborhood's eventual resurrection.

Tom Cousins, Eva Davis, and the Comeback of a Lifetime

In 1995, Atlanta real estate developer Tom Cousins did something that raised a lot of eyebrows: he quietly bought the dilapidated East Lake Golf Club and announced plans to restore it to its former glory. But Cousins had something bigger in mind than a pretty golf course. He partnered with the Atlanta Housing Authority and the East Lake Meadows Residents' Association to develop a bold, comprehensive plan — not just to renovate a neighborhood, but to rebuild an entire community from the ground up.

The East Lake Foundation was born. East Lake Meadows was demolished and replaced by the Villages of East Lake — a mixed-income development where half the units are subsidized and half are market-rate, deliberately designed to prevent the concentration of poverty that had doomed the original housing project. Crime didn't just decline — it collapsed. The strategy worked so well that it became a national model, giving rise to Purpose Built Communities, an organization that now replicates the East Lake approach in distressed neighborhoods across the country.

Meanwhile, Cousins began selling corporate memberships to the restored East Lake Golf Club at $125,000 a pop — with a suggested additional donation of $200,000 to the East Lake Foundation. That golf course has since contributed more than $20 million to support the surrounding community. The fairways of East Lake are literally funding one of the most ambitious social experiments in American urban history.

Drew Charter School: Atlanta's First — and Still One of Its Best

If the Villages of East Lake is the neighborhood's beating heart, then Drew Charter School is its spine. When Drew opened its doors in August 2000, it made history as Atlanta Public Schools' first public charter school. But the context matters enormously: before Drew existed, only 5% of area fifth graders could meet state math standards. The neighborhood schools were among the lowest-performing in the state. The bar wasn't just low — it was underground.

Named after Dr. Charles R. Drew — the pioneering African-American surgeon who literally invented the modern blood bank system and saved millions of lives through his research — the school began with 240 kindergartners through fifth graders. Today, Drew serves more than 1,800 students from Pre-K through 12th grade, operating as a full cradle-to-college educational pipeline.

The results are the kind that make education researchers do double-takes. Drew's inaugural senior class graduated in 2017 with a 100% graduation rate, with every single student accepted into college — earning over $5 million in scholarships. The Class of 2019 pulled in more than $12 million in college scholarships. In 2022, Drew became Georgia's first K-12 STEAM-certified school. The Georgia Charter Schools Association named Drew the Academic Charter School of the Year for Academic Excellence in 2020. From 5% meeting math standards to a school being replicated across the nation — that's East Lake.

And if you need one more jaw-dropping detail: in 2019, Drew Charter's Boys Varsity Golf Team became the first all-Black, first Atlanta Public Schools team ever to win a Georgia State Golf Championship. At the school next door to the golf course where Bobby Jones learned to play. You genuinely could not write this story any better.

East Lake Today: Where History Meets Hip

Modern East Lake is a neighborhood that wears its layers well. Its 1910s–1940s bungalows and cottages line tree-shaded streets, many lovingly restored by the young urbanites who discovered East Lake in the late 1990s and drove property values up by 230% almost overnight. The intersection of Hosea L. Williams Drive and Second Avenue has become the neighborhood's unofficial town square — a cluster of local restaurants, craft breweries, and coffee shops that feel genuinely earned rather than imported.

Perc Coffee draws the morning crowd. Poor Hendrix brings the small plates and craft cocktail energy. Hippin Hops Brewery keeps the weekend neighborly. My Coffee Shop — a Black-owned gem on Memorial Drive — serves up Southern breakfast that feels like Sunday morning at your grandmother's house. The East Lake Farmers Market runs April through October, and the annual Tour of Homes gives architecture enthusiasts a legitimate excuse to be nosy about their neighbors' renovations.

The 10-acre East Lake Park, built with over 800 volunteers from the community and corporate partners including Home Depot, Coca-Cola, and UPS, offers walking trails, playgrounds, and a recreation center. The Charlie Yates Golf Course — an 18-hole public executive course adjacent to the historic East Lake Club — keeps golf accessible for everyone, not just the PGA elite. And every August, when the TOUR Championship rolls in with the world's best 30 golfers, East Lake becomes the center of the sporting universe.

6 Things Even Born-and-Bred Atlantans Don't Know About East Lake

Think you know Atlanta? Test yourself.

Before Bobby Jones ever teed up, the land that became East Lake Golf Club was actually an amusement park — complete with a penny arcade, a swimming beach, steamboat rides on the lake, and all the Victorian-era thrills you'd expect. The Atlanta Athletic Club bought the abandoned site in 1904 and turned it into Atlanta's first golf course. The lake? It's still there. The steamboats are not.

Meadow Nook, the antebellum home built in 1856 for Lt. Col. Robert Augustus Alston's South Carolina bride, still stands directly across from the East Lake Golf Club. It is the second-oldest home in the City of Atlanta — and it survived Sherman's burning of Atlanta during the Civil War. Three antebellum homes survived in their original locations in the entire city. One is in East Lake.

Lt. Col. Alston, the original owner of Meadow Nook, was a journalist who exposed the brutal abuses of Georgia's convict labor leasing system. In 1879, he was shot and killed inside the Georgia State Capitol building. His historic home outlasted him by nearly 150 years. East Lake's very roots are wrapped in Georgia's complicated, painful history.

Johnny Weissmuller — winner of five Olympic gold medals in swimming and the first actor to play Tarzan in the movies — was a regular at the East Lake swimming facilities. So yes, the original Tarzan did his laps right here in intown Atlanta. The original Olympic champion Tarzan. In East Lake. Let that land.

In 1930, Bobby Jones — East Lake's most famous son — accomplished the single most dominant achievement in golf history by winning all four major championships in one year. He was 28 years old. He then retired from competitive golf permanently. No chase for another title, no victory lap, no farewell tour. He just stopped — and went on to co-found The Masters Tournament in Augusta. East Lake is where it all began, and where it all ended.

Most people watching the TOUR Championship each August have no idea that corporate golf memberships at East Lake Golf Club — sold at $125,000 each, with a suggested additional $200,000 donation — have pumped more than $20 million into the East Lake Foundation. That money has funded Drew Charter School, the Villages of East Lake, the East Lake Family YMCA, and the First Tee junior golf program. The world's best golfers competing for the FedEx Cup are simultaneously funding one of America's most celebrated neighborhood turnarounds. Golf as social justice. Only in East Lake.

The Bottom Line

East Lake is a neighborhood that has been a resort, a symbol of exclusivity, a cautionary tale, a war zone, and ultimately — a model for what's possible when a community refuses to accept its worst chapter as its final one. It is complicated, layered, imperfect, and absolutely extraordinary.

The sun rises first in Atlanta in East Lake. And given everything this neighborhood has been through and everything it has become, that feels exactly right.

Thinking about East Lake? Let's talk.

Shawn Morgan | Compass Atlanta

Specializing in Intown Atlanta's Most Storied Neighborhoods