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Local Arrangements Committee:
Atlanta Points of Interest
The following information about points of interest in Atlanta is listed alphabetically and is compiled from the web sites indicated.
APEX (African American Panoramic Experience) Museum, 135 Auburn Avenue. Hours: 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday, closed Mondays. Admission: $4 adult, $3 students and seniors 55+, free for children under 4. APEX is Atlanta’s only museum to celebrate the history of African Americans. The museum’s mission is to interpret and present history from an African American perspective in order to help all Americans and international visitors better understand and appreciate the contributions of African Americans to America as well. APEX highlights the achievements of African Americans in all disciplines including education, the arts, politics, business, the Civil Rights movement, economics and science. Visit the museum’s web site for a list of exhibits on display during the annual meeting dates.
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Atlanta Botanical Garden, 1345 Piedmont Avenue N.E. Hours: 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Tuesday–Sunday, closed Mondays. Admission: $12 adults, $9 seniors 65+, $7 students, free for children under 3. Guided tours: $11 adults, $10 seniors 65+. Atlanta Botanical Garden has numerous themed plant collections. The gardens are cultivated for their preservation and to be in harmony with their place in the ecosystem. ABG has a “Gardens under Glass” indoor collection that annual meeting attendees can explore. The Fuqua Conservatory has a number of exhibits beginning in the main lobby. Its educational exhibits illustrate the diversity of the plant kingdom with species from all over the tropical world. The Tropical Rotunda has hundreds of species from equatorial regions around the world. The Desert House contains succulent plants native to Madagascar and Southern Africa. The Orangerie houses a wide range of tropical and subtropical species of high economic and medicinal importance. Visit the Garden’s web site to find out which plants will be in bloom in January.
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Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum (click on “Programs and Services” for Atlanta Cyclorama), 800 Cherokee Avenue S.E. in Grant Park, next to the Zoo. Hours: 9:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m. daily, with Cyclorama shows every 30 minutes. Admission: $7 adults 13–59, $6 seniors 60+, $5 children from 6–12, free for children under 6. The Cyclorama is a large cylindrical painting of the Battle of Atlanta. It measures 42 feet high by 358 feet long and is the largest oil painting in the world. The cyclorama has been on display in Atlanta since 1893, and is the longest running show in the United States. Visitors view the painting from the inside, with the cylinder rotating slowly thus permitting a view of the entire painting. The centerpiece of the museum is the locomotive Texas, but there are also two floors of displays of Civil War artifacts, weapons, photographs, uniforms, and videos. A touch-screen computer system details the war day-by-day. Other videos highlight the restoration of the Cyclorama.
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Atlanta History Center, 130 West Paces Ferry Road. Hours: 10:00 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Monday–Saturday, noon–5:30 p.m. Sunday. Admission: $15 adult, $12 senior 65+ and students 13 and up, $10 children 4–12, free for children under 3. Located on 33 acres in the heart of Atlanta’s Buckhead district, the center includes one of the Southeast’s largest history museums; a research library and archives that annually serves more than 10,000 patrons; two historic houses illustrating over a century of Atlanta’s history; a two-acre midtown campus, which houses the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum; and a series of gardens unique in design and horticultural presentation in the metropolitan area. The center’s museum collection contains approximately 40,000 catalogued items and is regional in nature. It includes objects dating from the early nineteenth century to the present, not only items about Atlanta and its environs past and present, but also objects that refer to the history of Georgia, the South, and the nation. The Kenan Research Center collects primary and secondary source materials in all formats relating to the history of Atlanta and the culture of the American South.
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Jimmy Carter Library and Museum, 441 Freedom Parkway. Museum hours: 9:00 a.m.–4:45 p.m. Monday–Saturday, noon–4:45 p.m. Sunday. Library hours: 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Monday–Friday. Museum admission:$8 adults; $6 seniors 60+, military, and students with IDs; free for 16 and under. Part of the Presidential Library system administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, the Carter Library and Museum consists of an archives and a museum. The archives is a repository of approximately 27 million pages of Jimmy Carter’s White House material, papers of administration associates, including documents, memoranda, correspondence, and the like. There are also one-half million photographs, and hundreds of hours film, audio and video tape. To plan or research at the library, visitors should write, call, or e-mail (carter.library@nara.gov) the library to ask if it has material on the topic of research. The library staff will provide an assessment of the quantity and quality. The online publication Historical Materials in the Jimmy Carter Library contains basic information about the collections. Finding aid information is also available in the research room and on loan by mail.
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The Carter Center, 453 Freedom Parkway. Open to the public by business appointment only; see web site for contact information. Established in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, the Carter Center is “committed to advancing human rights and alleviating unnecessary human suffering.” The adjacent Carter Library and Museum and the Center are known collectively as the Carter Presidential Center. The grounds surrounding the complex are open from 7:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m. in January. The center is associated with Emory University and is governed by an independent board of trustees. It “seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health.”
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Centennial Olympic Park, 265 Park Avenue West at Techwood Drive. Hours: 7:00 a.m. –11:00 p.m. daily. Free admission. Centennial Olympic Park is a permanent tribute to the 1996 Olympic Games. Conceived as a town square, the 21-acre campus was developed from a neglected downtown area. Closed after the games and redesigned for permanent use, it reopened in 1998 as a park with artwork, rock gardens, pools, and fountains. A visitors’ center on International Boulevard in the southwest corner of the park across from the CNN Center has information about the park. Visitors can see the fountain in the shape of the five interlocking Olympic Rings in the paved plaza bordered by 23 flags honoring all the host countries of the modern Games as well as the Quilt Plazas, five plazas of contrasting bricks that tell the story of the Centennial Olympic Games. Visit the web site for events scheduled during the AHA’s annual meeting.
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CNN Center, One CNN Center. Hours: 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. daily, tours departing every 10 minutes. Reservations highly recommended as tours tend to sell out hours—and sometimes days—in advance. Call 1-877-4CNNTOUR or 404-827-2300 for reservations. Admission: $12 adult, $11 senior 65+, $9 children 4–18, children under four are not permitted on the tour. The Inside CNN Atlanta Studio Tour offers a close look at the inventor of 24-hour news. Ranked among Atlanta’s most popular destinations, Inside CNN Atlanta is a 55-minute guided walking tour offering guests behind-the-scenes views of the studios of CNN and a glimpse of newsgathering and broadcasting in action.
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Ebenezer Baptist Church, 407-413 Auburn Avenue N.E. Open for tours: 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Monday–Saturday, 1:00–5:00 p.m. Sundays. Admission: free. The Heritage Sanctuary is the historic Ebenezer Church where Dr. King, his father, and grandfather preached. The new Ebenezer church is the Horizon Sanctuary, completed and dedicated in 1999. It is not open for tours, although visitors are welcome to attend Sunday services.
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Fernbank Museum of Natural History, 767 Clifton Road N.E. Hours: 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Monday–Saturday, noon–5:00 p.m. Sunday. Admission: $12 adult, $11 students and senior, $10 children 12 and under, free for children under 2. One of the largest natural history museums in the United States, the Fernbank’s architecture is as interesting as the exhibits inside. The building has spiraling staircases, huge columns, a brick atrium, and windows overlooking the forest that it borders. The exhibits include a life-sized kaleidoscope, a skeleton of the largest dinosaur ever discovered, an IMAX theater, and a “Walk through Time in Georgia,” the story of the earth’s development complete with sound effects and recreated landscapes of a swamp, cavern, marsh, and plateau. Other museum attractions include a wetlands exhibit, a dramatically colorful living coral reef aquarium, a unique shell display, a gemstone collection, and the McClatchey Collection of jewelry and textiles from the old Silk Road countries.
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Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree Street N.E. Tour hours: 10:00 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday; 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. Saturday. Cost: $10 adult, $5 seniors and students. Tours meet in the Fox Theatre arcade. Contact the Atlanta Preservation Center if elevator access will be required during the tour (404-688-3353; www.preserveatlanta.com). The Fox Theatre, originally the Yaarab Temple Shrine Mosque, is a fully restored 1929 “Movie Palace,” and today is a multi-purpose facility housing Broadway shows, ballet, symphonies, concerts, and movies. It was designed as the headquarters for the 5,000-member Shriners organization, an example of the opulent and grandiose excesses of the pre-crash 1920s, a mosque-like structure complete with minarets, onion domes, and an interior decor even more lavish than its facade. Visitors encounter an indoor Arabian courtyard with a sky full of flickering stars and magically drifting clouds; a spectacular striped canopy overhanging the balcony; stage curtains depicting mosques, and Moorish rulers in hand-sewn sequins. Visit the web site for a 360-degree tour of the auditorium.
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Georgia Aquarium, 225 Baker Street. Hours: 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. daily. Admission: $22.75 adult, $19.50 senior 55+, $17 children 3–12, free for children under 3. Due to popularity, advance reservations or tickets are recommended as many time periods sell out well in advance. Orders can be placed by telephone or via the web site. The aquarium opened in November 2005 as the world’s largest, with 8 million gallons of fresh and marine water and more than 120,000 animals representing 500 species from around the globe. Visit the web site to download a map to take with you on your tour.
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Georgia State Capitol Building, 206 Washington Street at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Building hours: 8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Monday–Friday; in January, tours are scheduled at 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. and at 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. Tours begin on the main floor and take about 90 minutes. Visitors can take self-guided tours at any time when the capitol is open. The capitol building was completed in 1889, and is modeled after the nation’s Capitol. It is a neoclassical building with a 75-foot dome covered in gold leaf and topped by a Statue of Freedom. The building has a four-story portico with a pediment supported by six Corinthian columns set on large stone piers. The rotunda has a 237-foot ceiling and contains busts of famous Georgians, including signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Grand staircases in both wings rise to the third floor, where visitors can enter the House of Representatives and the Senate chambers. The legislature meets for 40 days, beginning the second Monday in January, and all of its sessions are open to the public. The fourth floor houses legislative galleries and the Georgia Capitol Museum, with exhibits on cotton, peach, and peanut growing; cases of mounted birds, fish, deer, insects, and other species native to Georgia; rocks and minerals; American Indian artifacts; and more.
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Hammonds House Galleries and Resource Center of African-American Art, 503 Peeples Street S.W. Hours: 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. Tuesday–Friday, 1:00–5:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, closed Monday. Suggested donation: $4 adults, $2 children, students, and seniors. The Hammonds House is the only independent, public museum in Atlanta dedicated exclusively to the collection, exhibition, and study of fine arts of the African diaspora. Housed in a nineteenth-century Eastlake Victorian facility, the museum offers an opportunity to gain a wider understanding of the contributions of diverse artists of African descent. It is also home to a vast resource center of slides, video archives, vertical files, and books on new age artists and their works as well as popular artists and their history.
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Herndon Home, 587 University Place N.W. Hours: 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., tours by appointment only. Admission: $5 adults, $3 students. The Herndon Home is a National Historic Landmark that tells the story of the struggles and achievements of its resident, Alonzo Herndon, who overcame slavery, sharecropping, and Jim Crow to become one of the foremost African American businessmen of his era. The 1910 mansion chronicles these events through tours, exhibits, publications, school programs, and other projects.
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High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree Street N.E. Hours: 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday; 10:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m. Thursday; 12:00–5:00 p.m. Sundays; closed Mondays. HIGHlights tour: 1:00 p.m. weekdays (except Monday), 1:00 and 6:30 p.m. Thursday, 2:00 p.m. weekends. General admission: $15 adults, $12 seniors 65+ and students with ID, $10 children 6–17, free for children under 6. Note: general museum admission for the permanent collection and other special exhibitions does not include admission to Louvre Atlanta, which is $15 adults, $12 seniors 65+ and students, $10 children 6–17, free for children under 6.
The High Museum of Art, founded in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association, is the leading art museum in the Southeastern United States. With over 11,000 works of art in its permanent collection, the High (as it is called) has an extensive anthology of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American art; significant holdings of European paintings and decorative art; and growing collections of African American art, photography, modern and contemporary art, and African art. The museum is also dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists and is the only major museum in North America to have a curatorial department specifically devoted to the field of folk and self-taught art. A 177,000-square-foot expansion completed in November 2005 more than doubled the museum’s size. It added three new buildings and created a “village for the arts” at the Woodruff Arts Center campus in Midtown Atlanta.
Opening in October 2006, Louvre AtlantaTM is an unprecedented partnership between the High Museum and the Musée du Louvre in Paris that will bring hundreds of works of art from the Louvre’s collections to Atlanta. Built around specific themes and periods, the High will present a series of long-term special presentations of art from the Louvre from October 2006 through 2009. Over the course of the three-year partnership, Louvre AtlantaTM will trace the history and development of the Louvre from the seventeenth century through the present. The three exhibitions in year one will focus on the genesis of the royal collection of the pre-Revolutionary Régime—the works collected by the Kings before the Louvre was converted from a palace to a museum during the late eighteenth century and that make up the heart of the Louvre’s collections.
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Imagine It! The Children’s Museum of Atlanta, 275 Centennial Olympic Park Drive N.W. Hours: 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. Monday–Friday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission: $11, free for children under 2. Due to high visitor volume, the museum encourages visitors to purchase tickets online in advance to ensure entrance upon arrival. Opened in 2003, Imagine It! is a 30,000-square-foot children’s museum located across the street from Centennial Olympic Park. Based on Howard Gardiner’s theory of multiple intelligences, Imagine It! features colorful hands-on exhibits and activities that allow children the opportunity to look, listen, touch, and explore in order to discover first-hand how things work. There are four major learning zones: Fundamentally Food, Let Your Creativity Flow, Tools for Solutions, and Leaping into Learning, the specialty zone for toddlers. The museum is recommended for children ages two to eight, but all are welcome.
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Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, 450 Auburn Avenue. Hours: 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. daily. Admission: free. The area two blocks around Auburn Avenue was established by the National Park Service to preserve the birthplace and boyhood surroundings of Dr. King. Designated a National Historic Site, the blocks include King’s boyhood home and the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Other Auburn Avenue attractions, though not under NPS auspices, are the King Center and the APEX Museum. Several more surrounding blocks have been designated as a preservation district. The area is known as Sweet Auburn. There is a visitor center at 450 Auburn Ave., across from the King Center. It provides a complete orientation to area attractions and includes a theater for audiovisual and interpretive programs, interactive exhibits, and a bookstore.
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Martin Luther King Jr. Birth Home, 501 Auburn Avenue. Hours: 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. daily. Admission: free. Tours depart from Fire Station No. 6 (at Boulevard and Auburn Avenues) every hour. They are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Visitors should register in person upon arrival at the National Park Service Visitor Center (450 Auburn Avenue N.E. across from the King Center; open 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m). The tour is strictly limited to 15 people per tour and fills up quickly on weekends. Tours of the house begin in the downstairs parlor, which was used for choir practice, and continues through the house, concluding with the bedroom King shared with his brother.
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The King Center, 449 Auburn Avenue N.E. between Boulevard and Jackson Streets. Hours: 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. daily. Admission: free. The King Center is a memorial, museum, and educational center dedicated to Dr. King’s commitment to nonviolent social change. Visitors can take a self-guided tour of the center, beginning in Freedom Hall where memorabilia of King and the civil rights movement are displayed, such as King’s Bible and a hand-written sermon. Other exhibits include rooms honoring Rosa Parks and Gandhi. The center’s library and archives house the world’s largest collection of books and other materials documenting the civil rights movement, including Dr. King’s personal papers. The library is open by appointment only for scholarly research. The center’s Freedom Plaza is also Dr. King’s burial site.
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Margaret Mitchell House and Museum, 990 Peachtree Street. Hours: 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. daily. Admission: $12 adults, $9 seniors 65+ and students 13+, $5 children 4–12, free for children under 4. The Margaret Mitchell House was built in 1899 as a two-story, single-family home with a fashionable Peachtree Street address. It was converted into a 10-unit apartment building, and subsequently converted again to a three-story apartment building. Margaret Mitchell moved into the building’s Apartment 1 in 1925, where she wrote the majority of her classic novel, Gone with the Wind. In 1989, the house was the first building in Atlanta to be declared a city landmark. Arsonists have struck twice: once in 1994 and again in May 1996, just weeks before the renovated building would open for the Olympic Games. It was opened in 1997 as a historic site listed on the National Register of Historic Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Today it houses the Center for Southern Literature, which hosts weekly literary events and creative writing classes for adults and youth, and administers the PEN/Faulkner “Writers in Schools” Program. Visit the web site for events scheduled during the AHA’s annual meeting.
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Underground Atlanta, 50 Upper Alabama Street, at MARTA’s Five Points Station, plus several other entrances. The total size of Underground Atlanta is six city blocks—12 acres. The retail shopping center consists of 225,000 square feet. Originally opened in 1969 and closed in 1980, it reopened in 1989 at a cost of more than $140 million. Today, Underground Atlanta offers retail shops, special events, unique entertainment offerings, the Old Alabama Eatery food court, and many fine restaurants. Visit the web site for a complete list of shops and events.
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Woodruff Arts Center is a not-for-profit center for performing and visual arts. It includes the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the High Museum of Art, High Downtown Folk Art and Photography Galleries, Young Audiences, and 14th Street Playhouse. You can visit the center’s web site for links to these arts and cultural attractions, for downloadable teaching resources, and links to sources for arts education funding, advocacy, and research.
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World of Coca-Cola, 55 Martin Luther King Drive. Hours: 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. Monday–Saturday, 11:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Sunday. Admission: $9 adults, $8 senior 60+, $5 children 4–11, free for children under 3. The facility has a number of galleries, including “Creating a Classic” that features “Bottling Fantasy,” an unusual kinetic sculpture depicting a fanciful look at the Coca-Cola bottling process. Gallery artifacts span the period 1886 to 1926. The second gallery is “The Pause That Refreshes,” which houses the replica late-1930s Barnes Soda Fountain, where an old-fashioned “soda jerk” demonstrates how an early Coca-Cola was prepared and served. Original songs about Coca-Cola, as well as rebroadcasts of radio programs sponsored by the company, are played on an authentic 1930s jukebox. This gallery covering the mid-1920s to 1950. “Perfect Pauses” has a surround-sound theater, highlights classic television commercials for Coca-Cola spanning more than fifty years. The final gallery is “The Real Thing,” displaying the evolution of Coca-Cola as a global brand.
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Zoo Atlanta, 800 Cherokee Avenue in Grant Park. Hours: 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m. weekdays; 9:30 a.m.–6:30 p.m. weekends. Admission: $17.99 ages 12 and up, $13.99 seniors 55+, $12.99 children 3–11, free for children under 2. Rides and attractions have additional charges and tax is added to all prices. This 40-acre zoo was founded in 1889, and has been undergoing a dramatic renovation and expansion since the mid-1980s. The zoo houses animals in large open enclosures simulating natural habitats. It is home to many endangered animals, including Sumatran orangutans, western lowland gorillas, black rhinos, African elephants, Komodo monitors, and big-mouthed African dwarf crocodiles. Currently, the exhibit creating the biggest stir is the Asian Forest, home to Lun Lun and Yang Yang, two giant pandas. Visitors can walk through the Flamingo Plaza, Ford African Rain Forest, the Ketambe section, the Children’s Zoo area, and the Australian-themed Outback Station. Zoo Atlanta is served by MARTA bus route 97, which runs between the zoo and the Georgia Aquarium from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, the bus runs from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., stopping at the Five Points rail station.
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