Images of America: Historic Grant Park (Arcadia Publishing) tells the story of one of Atlanta’s oldest neighborhoods and its 131-acre park, named for Lemuel Pratt Grant (1817-1893), an Atlanta railroad pioneer executive born in Franklin, Maine. The park was Grant’s gift to the City of Atlanta, designed by John Charles Olmsted, the stepson of the renowned Frederick Law Olmsted.

Grant Park became an urban haven where people came to “take the waters” from its natural springs, canoe on Lake Abana, and stroll the winding pathways in the pastoral park. A neighborhood sprang up around this oasis and was filled with homes that were designed in the spirit of Victorian painted ladies, Craftsman bungalows, Queen Anne, and New South cottages.

In 1979, the structures within the neighborhood and park were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Images and relics of this idyllic area have been preserved by organizations such as the Atlanta Preservation Center, the Atlanta History Center, the State of Georgia, and Georgia State University. These collections, along with those of past and present neighborhood residents and local churches, are showcased in Images of America: Historic Grant Park.

Since the early 1990s, authors Jennifer Goad Cuthbertson and Philip M. Cuthbertson have made this neighborhood their home and have worked with a variety of organizations to preserve the integrity of it as well as the park. The authors have pledged the proceeds of the book to the Atlanta Preservation Center’s restoration of the L. P. Grant Mansion, located at 327 Saint Paul Ave SE, Atlanta, GA 30312-3129, (404) 688-3353.

Joseph Gatins is the author of the new non-fiction biography We Were Dancing on a Volcano: Bloodlines and Fault Lines of a Star-Crossed Atlanta Family, 1849-1989, published by The Glade Press. The indexed, 330-page book, with family pictures and news clips, is a who’s who tale with truth bearing episodes of the Atlanta-New York Gatins family.

The author grew up in Paris and Atlanta and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He served in Vietnam as a U.S. Army intelligence analyst during 1969-1970, and awarded the Bronze Star for that service. He is a former Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter and special projects editor, now retired to the mountains of north Georgia. Gatins chronicles memorable family characters especially his elegant French grandmother, Marie de Villelume-Sombreuil Gatins. Her oral history reminiscence tape-recorded in 1976 and her 1988 written memoir pepper the family history with the turmoil of occupied France during World War II.

Three key family role players with the same Joseph Gatins name are all buried now in Historic Oakland Cemetery. They are Irish born, great-great grandfather Joseph F. Gatins (1827-1905), settling first in Savannah and connecting with the Central of Georgia Railroad; great-grandfather, Atlanta native Joseph Francis Gatins, Sr. (1855-1936) New York Wall Street wheeler-dealer-builder of the Georgian Terrace Hotel; and one armed grandfather, Joseph Francis Gatins, Jr. (1882-1927), known as Joe, sportsman and real estate investor, died in his Georgian Terrace Hotel apartment.

Both books are available on Amazon and check with your local bookstore.

– Ann Boutwell