19. PIEDMONT PARK, 

embracing 185 acres bounded by Tenth St., Piedmont Ave., Westminster Drive, and the Southern Railway, is Atlanta's largest municipal park. Within this area are a lake, swimming pool, golf course, polo field, baseball diamonds, tennis courts, and a supervised playground for children. The rolling terrain has proved readily adaptable to landscape work, which has resulted in the steep slopes, high terraces, and climbing roadways that give so bold and spacious an aspect to the scene. Throughout the grounds wind asphalt driveways and gravel walks shaded by many trees: oaks, sycamores, elms, beeches, poplars, magnolias, and weeping willows, as well as imported varieties less common to this section. Many of the trees have been classified and marked with identification tags by the WPA.

During all seasons of good weather the park is full of life-bicycling schoolboys, children with their nurses feeding the ducks, elderly ladies with leashed dogs, boys and girls in white tennis clothes, fishermen dangling their lines for black bass. On summer nights lamps glow softly upon the strolling couples and cast reflections of jagged brightness along the lake.

The present area of Piedmont Park was contained in a grant issued to Samuel Walker in 1834. This holding remained intact in the possession of his descendants until 1887, when Walker's large stone house and a 189-acre tract were purchased by the Gentlemen's Driving Club. This smart, newly formed organization bought the land for the forthcoming Piedmont Exposition, for which Henry Grady, the famous orator and journalist and a member of the club, provided publicity in the pages of the Constitution,

The exposition was opened on October 10, 1887, with a parade and an address by the handsome, popular Governor John B. Gordon, who had become a Confederate idol for his services on General Robert E. Lee's staff. A week later President Grover Cleveland addressed a crowd of 50,000 here. During the 12 days of the exposition great crowds viewed exhibits demonstrating the advancement of the modern South and derived entertainment from parades, sham battles, bicycling, clay pigeon shooting, and fireworks displays.

The Cotton States and International Exposition was opened on September 18, 1895, when President Cleveland in the White House pressed a telegraphic key and a 100-gun salute was fired. Many States throughput the Nation had displays here, while European and South American countries were well represented. The most striking State exhibit was Pennsylvania's Liberty Bell brought from Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Music was provided by the bands of Victor Herbert and John Philip Sousa and by Theodore Thomas' orchestra from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. The lake was used for aquatic events, the first time such sports had been publicly demonstrated in Atlanta.

Among the celebrated men who attended the exposition were General George W. Schofield, the Federal commander whose troops had invaded Georgia more than 20 years earlier; Jeff Cain, the engineer of the General when it was captured by Andrews' Raiders in 1862; and Booker T. Washington, the Negro educator, who made a stirring address on the opportunities of his emancipated race.

During the exposition Atlanta business boomed and the city received world-wide publicity. After its close various proposals were made for future disposition of the land, but all were rejected and on May 23, 1904, the park was purchased by the city for $93,000. All connection was now broken between Piedmont Park and the Gentlemen's Driving Club, which had become the Piedmont Driving Club. The park, becoming constantly more popular, was improved from year to year by additional recreation facilities and scenic beautification.

The most important event here in recent years was the brief address by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his visit to Atlanta in November 1935. Although the day was chill and sunless, an enthusiastic crowd gathered to pay homage and receive the President's warm words of greeting and encouragement.

The Peace Monument, centering the driveway at Fourteenth Street entrance, is a massive bronze group depicting a Confederate soldier kneeling with lowered gun while the Goddess of Peace extends an olive branch. This sculpture, the work of Allen Newman of New York, was presented to Atlanta by the Gate City Guard and unveiled before a large crowd on October 10, 1911. In commemoration of peace, blue-coated Union veterans mingled with Confederate veterans in gray uniforms at the ceremony.

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