Pic(k) of the Week: Pratt-Pullman Yard

A view of the over-century-old Pratt-Pullman Yard in the Kirkwood district of Atlanta, Georgia, as seen from the Pullman Trail, on 6 March 2018.

These dilapidated, hulking buildings once housed plants for the production of chemicals, soft drink gases, military munitions, and railroad cars. Grafitti-festooned, they became backdrops for several films and cable productions. Now, they are slated to be redeveloped.

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History

In 1904, the Pratt Engineering Company built a sugar and fertilizer processing plant on twenty-eight acres of farmland in Kirkwood, then an independent city east of the city of Atlanta, Georgia. Among other things, the company produced sulfuric acid (for which it held a patent) and liquid carbon dioxide for soda fountains. During World War I, Pratt temporarily converted the plant to manufacture munitions.

In 1924, the Pullman Passenger Rail Company —a leading manufacturer of railroad cars from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century— purchased the buildings and built a large railcar service and repair depot. At the time, Pullman exercised a near monopoly on rail passenger 'sleeping cars' throughout the United States. After a 1943 antitrust decree, the company began to downsize and, in 1954, closed the facility.

From then through the 1970s, both Georgia Power and Southern Iron and Equipment Company owned the yard at various times. Southern used it to manufacture and repair train locomotives and train parts. Georgia Power used the Yard to house and repair its fleet of 'Trackless Trolleys' —electric buses that drew power from overhead lines— with which it was replacing its fixed rail trolleys. In 1990, the Georgia Building Authority bought the property to house a dinner-train that ran between downtown Atlanta and Stone Mountain but shut it down in 1993. Semi-abandoned, Pratt-Pullman became a popular filming location.

As the buildings became dilapidated, efforts at preservation and environmental remediation by the city and local groups were rebuffed by the state of Georgia. In June 2017, the state sold the property, for $8 million, to Atomic Entertainment, which announced plans to 'renovate' the Pratt-Pullman Yard as an "arts-and-entertainment district."

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• More photos of the Pratt-Pullman Yard and the Pullman Trail: here.
  
  
• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of photos taken (or noted) by me, posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always (as is the case today), with a good fermentable as the subject.
• See the photo on Flickr: here.
• Camera: Olympus Pen E-PL1.
• Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.


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