BEYOND THE BEATEN BOULEVARD

Atlanta’s Historic Neighborhoods Worth the Detour

Virginia-Highland: The Name That Saved a Neighborhood

Most people believe they know Virginia-Highland. They know its bungalows, its restaurant patios, its Saturday morning farmers market, its sidewalks crowded on any evening worth being outside. And yet, beneath the ease and familiarity of what VaHi presents to the world lies a history that most of its own residents have never fully read — a story of farms and farmland, of streetcars that shaped the very curves of its streets, of a freeway that nearly erased it, and of a name that did not fully exist until 1972. I invite you to walk these pathways with me — not as a tour, but as a journey of genuine discovery — because in learning what a neighborhood refused to lose, we inevitably learn something about what we ourselves hold most worth keeping.

The history of Virginia-Highland begins not with bungalows, not with coffee shops, and certainly not with the intersection from which it takes its name. It begins in 1812, when a settler named William Zachary bought 202.5 acres of farmland here — more than a decade before Atlanta itself was incorporated, when this land was simply rolling Georgia countryside with no particular destiny. In 1822, Zachary sold his farm to Richard Copeland Todd, and it is the Todd family’s presence that shaped the first geography of the place. Richard’s brother-in-law, Hardy Ivy, had settled what is now Downtown Atlanta in 1832, and the road connecting their two farms — running between the Todd homestead and Ivy’s plot in the city — came to be known as Todd Road. That road still exists in Virginia-Highland today. Most people who live on or near it have no idea who the Todds were.

The Todd family homestead itself stood near Greenwood Avenue and Barnett Street for nearly a century, until fire destroyed it on October 31, 1910. By then, the world around it had changed beyond recognition — and the change had come, as it so often does in Atlanta’s story, by rail.

Between 1888 and 1890, the Nine-Mile Circle streetcar arrived — organized by Georgia Railroad executive Richard Peters and real estate developer George Washington Adair, who recognized that a city willing to extend its tracks was a city willing to extend itself. At first, the streetcar was a novelty. Atlantans rode it not to commute but to visit “the countryside” — the rolling farmland of what is now Virginia-Highland was, to the city dweller of the 1890s, a destination in itself.

What most people who walk these streets today do not know is that the streetcar’s geometry is still with them. At the intersection of Virginia and North Highland Avenues — the neighborhood’s namesake corner — the streets sweep with unusually wide, graceful curves. Those curves were not an aesthetic choice. They were an engineering necessity: the Nine-Mile Circle trolley required a turning radius that no sharp corner could accommodate. The streetcar has been gone since 1947. Its curves remain.

In 1922, a modest establishment called the Atkins Park Delicatessen opened at 794 North Highland Avenue. It served food. It kept its head down. And then, in 1927, it became a bar and restaurant — obtaining what is reportedly Atlanta’s oldest continuously active liquor license. Atkins Park has operated under that license for nearly a hundred years, through Prohibition’s aftermath, through the neighborhood’s decline, through its revival, and through every trend that has swept through the restaurant industry since the Coolidge administration. It is not merely a bar. It is a document.

Here is the fact about Virginia-Highland that surprises even long-term residents most: the name itself — the name on every sign, every address, every piece of real estate marketing — was not officially settled until 1972. And it was settled not by developers or city planners but by a fight.

In the early 1970s, the Georgia Department of Transportation proposed building Interstate 485 directly through the neighborhood, connecting Freedom Parkway and Georgia 400. A group that called itself the Highland-Virginia Civic Association claimed to support the highway on behalf of residents. In the fall of 1971, Joseph Drolet and his neighbors organized the opposing force: they named it, deliberately, the Virginia-Highland Civic Association — choosing to flip the words as an act of identity, as a way of saying that this neighborhood and that pro-highway group were not the same thing. When the anti-freeway forces won, the Virginia-Highland name won with them, and the press began using it to describe the entire neighborhood.

John Howell Memorial Park, which sits at the center of VaHi today, occupies the exact land the City of Atlanta had condemned and purchased to build the freeway. The park is named for John Howell, the anti-freeway activist who led the fight and died before seeing it completed. Every picnic, every dog walk, every summer evening spent on that grass is an act of unintentional remembrance.

Virginia-Highland is one of only seven Atlanta neighborhoods to have an official neighborhood arboretum — a mapped walking route of trees identified by species, location, and significance, with markers placed at each one. Most residents have walked these routes without ever knowing the routes exist. The trees along Drewry, Virginia, and St. Charles Avenues are not simply pleasant shade. They are a living record of the landscape this place has maintained across more than a century of change. Trees Atlanta partnered with the neighborhood to make it official. The result is one of the quietest and most beautiful things Atlanta has managed to preserve.

A neighborhood is not only its history. It is also who it has chosen to feed, and the choices Virginia-Highland has made at the table are exceptional.

Murphy’s has been the cornerstone of this neighborhood for forty-five years — a modern American restaurant in a brick-accented space where the food is consistently exceptional and the atmosphere feels, genuinely and without effort, like home. The Guinness-braised brisket, the seared Carolina trout, the legendary Tollhouse Pie: these are not trends. They are the kind of dishes that make a neighborhood institution, and Murphy’s has earned that word honestly.

997 Virginia Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30306  ·  (404) 872-0904  ·  Check Out Murphy's Restaurant

La Tavola Trattoria is where Virginia-Highland keeps its Italian soul. Rustic brick walls, candlelight, house-made pastas, and a wine list that rewards curiosity — the spaghetti and veal meatballs alone justify the walk. On Monday nights, the Molto Monday pasta special offers three of the house’s best dishes at a price that makes the evening feel like a gift from the kitchen. This is the kind of restaurant that becomes a neighborhood memory.

992 Virginia Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30306  ·  (404) 873-5430  ·  Check Out La Tavola Restaurant

Atkins Park Tavern is not simply the oldest continuously licensed tavern in Atlanta. It is the living proof that longevity and quality are not mutually exclusive. Elevated comfort — confit chicken wings slow-fried in duck fat, fried green tomato Benedict with Sriracha hollandaise, a Guinness-dipped pretzel that arrives without apology — served in a space whose muted lighting and elevated booths feel worn in precisely the right way.

794 N Highland Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30306  ·  (404) 876-7249  Check Out Atkins Park

The Highland Tap is subterranean in the most literal sense — you descend into it, and the world above disappears. Since 1989, this steakhouse has served what many consider one of Atlanta’s finest martinis alongside a menu built around the wood-fired and the slow-roasted. The 32-ounce tomahawk bone-in ribeye is the kind of commitment that requires no apology. The speakeasy ambiance is not affectation; it is simply what the room is.

1026 N Highland Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30306  ·  (404) 875-3673  ·  Check Out Highland Tap

The VaHi Neighborhood Arboretum Walk is free, self-guided, and available to anyone willing to download the map from the VHCA website. The route winds through the neighborhood’s most architecturally significant blocks, past trees identified by species and marked by small plaques, many of them older than any building they shade. It is a quiet, unhurried, genuinely restorative experience — and it belongs, equally, to every visitor willing to take it.

Virginia-Highland Civic Association  ·  vahi.org  ·  Check Out ViHi Arboretum Walk

Virginia-Highland could have become an expressway. The land was condemned. The plans were drawn. The demolition was scheduled. And then a group of neighbors — ordinary people with a name, a civic association, and a conviction that the road less traveled was worth fighting to keep — said no. What they saved was not simply a neighborhood. They saved the idea that a community has the right to determine its own geometry. That the curves the streetcar left in the streets are worth preserving. That the oldest liquor license in the city, and the arboretum planted along the sidewalks, and the park built on the land that was meant to be destroyed, are all part of the same continuous act of choosing what to remember.

Walk these blocks with me. The name was hard-won. The detour, it turns out, was always the destination.

Shawn Morgan  |  Compass Atlanta  |  Luxury Intown Atlanta Expert

Seven-Time Top Producer

shawnatl.com  |  404-844-9086  |  [email protected]

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