Preserving the cultural heritage of our city
College Park was built by a railroad.
It was saved by its own neighbors.
In 1978, a group of residents chartered this Society for one urgent reason: to keep an expanding airport from erasing the historic core of their city. They won. What started as a fight to save a downtown is now the fourth largest urban historic district in Georgia, and the archive that proves it.
The marker trail
A history worth defending.
Every city says it has history. College Park organized, lobbied, and won to keep hold of its own. Here is the record.
Muscogee homeland
Long before any land grant, this ground was part of the Muscogee (Creek) homeland, the confederacy of towns that occupied and governed this part of Georgia for generations before removal.
A land grant, before there was a town
The ground College Park now stands on is first recorded in a state land grant, decades before a single street was platted.
The Atlanta & West Point Railroad arrives
The completed rail line through the area sets the course for everything that follows: a depot, a platted town, and eventually a city built around the tracks.
Manchester incorporated
A fully planned manufacturing town is incorporated under the name Manchester, the blueprint for the neighborhood grid still walked today.
Cox College and Conservatory arrives
Also known as Southern Female College, the school relocates from LaGrange, giving the future city its first claim to the word “college.”
Reincorporated as College Park
Manchester is reincorporated as College Park after a public naming contest. The winning entry, submitted by resident Lula Roper, earned her a choice lot in town.
A military academy, and a clubhouse still standing
Southern Military Academy opens, later reorganized as Georgia Military Academy. The same era gives Main Street its 1897 Women’s Club building, still hosting gatherings today as Camellia Hall.
Cox College closes, Woodward Academy opens
Cox College closes and reopens twice under different missions before the property changes hands entirely. In 1966, the military program is dropped and the school takes the name it carries today: Woodward Academy. Through the same decades, architect Leila Ross Wilburn shapes many of the homes that still define the district.
An airport grows, and a city loses ground
As what became Hartsfield-Jackson expanded, entire College Park blocks, from homes to churches to cemeteries, were purchased and cleared for runways and noise buffers. It is a real loss the Society documents alongside everything else it preserves.
Eva L. Thomas High School
Opened in 1964 to serve College Park’s Black students, Eva L. Thomas quickly built a reputation for academics and athletics. When the school board ordered it closed in 1969 under desegregation pressure, more than 300 students marched to fight for it. Its Bearcats had won a state basketball championship that same year, the first Black team in Georgia to do so. Its students were integrated and zoned into College Park High School and other schools in the area.
MARTA rail reaches College Park
College Park station opens as the first stop on the line after the Airport itself, connecting the city directly to downtown Atlanta and putting its historic core a single ride from the terminal that once threatened it.
College Park Historical Society is chartered
Residents form the Society to organize against the airport’s proposed northward expansion, which threatened to take the historic core along with it. It is a preservation fight from day one, not a hobby.
National Register listing
The campaign pays off. The College Park Historic District earns a place on the National Register of Historic Places, giving the neighborhood the protection it was founded to secure.
Still growing the archive
The Society is currently expanding public access to its archive, supported by the Preservation Conservancy, alongside a new Visitors Center in partnership with the City and the College Park Museum.
What we hold
The permanent collection.
Nine categories, one city. If it shaped College Park, there is a folder for it.
Homes
Deeds, floor plans, and photographs of the residences that make up the city’s historic blocks.
Monuments
The markers, memorials, and cornerstones College Park has chosen to make permanent. Monuments in the community can be donated to the College Park Historical Preservation Conservancy for safekeeping.
Businesses
Storefront ledgers and signage from the Main Street business district, past and present.
Schools
Records tracing Cox College, Georgia Military Academy, Woodward Academy, Eva L. Thomas High School, College Park High School, Lakeshore, and more.
Churches
Congregational histories for the sanctuaries that have anchored College Park neighborhoods for generations.
Parks
The green spaces platted into the city since its earliest days as a planned town.
Cemetery
Burial records, plot histories, obits, and obituaries preserved for family and researcher access.
Government building
Municipal records charting how the city has governed itself since its founding.
Transportation
MARTA, Highway 29, Main Street, the railway, and more: the routes that have connected College Park to the region since its earliest days.
Main street, preserved
Growth and history, sharing a sidewalk.
Downtown College Park is still anchored by its historic Main Street business district, where design standards keep new storefronts in conversation with the old ones instead of erasing them. The Society works alongside the city’s Main Street Office to make sure revitalization adds to the record rather than paving over it.
Storefronts along Main Street in an earlier era.
The same corridor today, still doing business.
Built in 1897, seating 300 guests from the start.
The same building, now known as Camellia Hall.
- 01College Park is among the few Georgia cities whose 1890s residential design involved a working female architect, Leila Ross Wilburn, a distinction the Society documents in detail.
- 02The city’s position near Hartsfield-Jackson, I-85, the CSX line, and MARTA has kept it a crossroads since its earliest railroad days.
- 03Design standards from the Main Street Office keep new development in conversation with the historic blocks around it, rather than replacing them outright.
Beyond Main Street
Other areas worth knowing.
The same story of change and preservation, playing out across the rest of the city.
First United Methodist Church → First United Methodist Church & PushPush Arts
College Park’s first church, built 125 years ago, now shares its campus with PushPush Arts as part of the ION College Park arts and housing project.
Wayman & Bessie Brady Recreation Center
Opened in 1956 and named for its first center coordinators, the Brady Center and the Conley Center across town were built as a segregated pair, Black residents used Brady, white residents used Conley. Brady went on to host the College Park Youth Basketball Program for more than fifty years and remains an active rec center today.
College Park Cemetery
Located on Virginia Avenue, College Park Cemetery holds generations of the city’s residents.
Camp Truitt → Roderick Gay Botanical Garden
The historic Camp Truitt 4-H site, still in use today, is being developed into the 40-acre Roderick Gay Botanical Garden, named for the Ward 4 councilman who championed it for nearly two decades. Construction broke ground in late 2025; the image at right is a concept rendering of the finished garden, not a photograph.
“This is a city that was nearly rezoned out of its own memory. We were chartered to make sure that didn’t happen, and it didn’t.”College Park Historical Society, Archive Notes
Come see it in person
The archive is behind City Hall, and the door is open.
The Society is an official partner of the City of College Park, working under an active preservation agreement to protect local landmarks. We’re currently expanding public access to our archive, and we’d rather show you the collection than describe it.
College Park, GA 30337
Behind City Hall