AP Photograph/Atlanta Journal-Structure picture, Skip Mason Archives
186 ½ Auburn Avenue is a landmark in itself. The small, nondescript two-story brick constructing has been a middle of black arts, leisure and nightlife for practically 90 years: The Royal Peacock, Atlanta’s oldest black music venue, has operated repeatedly for the reason that Thirties.
For many years, historic Auburn Avenue was Black Atlanta’s Most important Avenue, the middle of its financial, social and political energy. As soon as referred to as ‘The Richest Negro Avenue within the World’, Auburn Avenue was anchored by venues equivalent to The Royal Peacock, a music venue and lounge that has stood the take a look at of time; Always adapting, however not abandoning his viewers.
In its practically 90 years of operation, The Royal Peacock has hosted an incredible string of legends: Aretha Franklin, Dizzy Gillespie, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, B.B. King and the Supremes, to not point out homegrown Georgia stars like Ray Charles, Gladys Knight. , Little Richard, and James Brown. Among the many crowds that gathered to observe them play had been notable patrons equivalent to Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali.
Then and now, the Royal Peacock has served as one in all Atlanta’s most enduring “third locations”: public, social areas, past the necessities of day by day life, together with house (first place) and work or college (second). Third areas supply a neighborhood gathering house, self-selected by those that need to join exterior of these important day by day actions.
The nice American suburbanization of the previous half century has upended the social cloth that after sure cities collectively. Regional planners have traded human-scale, walkable neighborhoods stuffed with simply linked areas for formal and casual social gatherings—for transactional, retail-oriented strip malls and isolationist cul-de-sac developments. Atlanta’s creation of suburbs and exurbs got here on the expense of its city neighborhoods.
Within the mid-Sixties, metropolis officers constructed an interstate connecting downtown instantly by way of Auburn Avenue. The multilane freeway was first disrupted, then utterly demolished, a hub of black-owned companies and neighborhood power. Regardless of this decline, The Royal Peacock survives because the final remaining third location on Auburn Avenue. The music venue, now a reggae nightclub, is one in all Atlanta’s few repeatedly devoted areas for black music and social gatherings. The place has managed to outlast Jim Crow segregation, the Auburn Avenue freeway invasion, and the Olympization of the 90s; Can it survive the brand new period of Atlanta? Solely time will inform.
This text appeared in our Might 2024 difficulty.
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