A Look Back

By Ann Boutwell

March 4, 1902: Although unfinished, the Atlanta Carnegie Library, designed by New York architects Ackerman and Ross opened to the public for inspection. Librarian Anne Wallace, Assistant Charles William Hubner, and the all-female staff welcomed hundreds of guests. During the informal reception on the lower floor Mayor Livingston Mims said that “if it had not been for the efforts of Miss Anne Wallace, Atlanta would not have received the substantial aid, which made the library possible.” A few days later, Mrs. W. B. Green of 139 Baker Street checked out the first books.

March 3, 2002: Sculptor John Thomas Riddle Jr, creator of Expelled Because of Color, which stands on the Georgia State Capital campus died in Atlanta. He was 68 years old. The six-foot-tall bronze piece is a memorial to 33 African-American legislators who were expelled from the Georgia General Assembly in 1868.

March 7, 1982: Alonzo “Lonnie” Mann, a witness in the infamous Leo Frank case, admitted 69 years after the crime that Frank was innocent of the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagen. She had been working at the pencil factory in 1912 inserting rubber erasers into the metal tips of nearly finished pencils. At the time of the trial, 14-year-old Mann was an employee at the National Pencil Factory, an old four-story brick building 37 & 41 South Forsyth Street.

March 10, 1915: Your Girl and Mine, a moving picture melodrama produced by the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, opened for a two-day showing at the Grand Theatre on Peachtree Street. Three minute introductory talks were given before each reel by members from the Atlanta’s three different local branches of the association. They were Maybelle Stephens Mitchell, Rebecca Latimer Felton, Frances Whiteside, Lollie Belle Wylie, and Eleanor Raoul.

March 13, 1906: The Atlanta Chapter of the Georgia Association of the American Institute of Architects was chartered at the offices of Morgan and Dillon in the Prudential Building. The city’s first female architect, Harriet Cuttino Dozier, was one of the six charter members who also included Alexander Campbell Bruce, Walter Thomas Dowling, Thomas Henry Morgan, Gottfried Leonard Norrman and Harry Leslie Walker.

March 27, 1890: Photographer Linnie Condon’s camera captured the aftermath of the devastating 1890 tornado in Louisville, Ky.  These images, preserved in the University of Louisville’s photographic archives, enhanced her reputation as a professional, which was well-known in the south from the late 1880s until her March 1909 death in Atlanta. After the 1890 tornado, Condon moved to Atlanta and opened a studio over Jacobs Pharmacy on Whitehall Street. In January 1895, during the National Woman Suffrage Association gathering in Atlanta, Condon had the honor of photographing Susan B. Anthony, which today is in the Library of Congress.  Portraits of President Emma Mims Thompson’s and the members of the 1895 Board of Lady Managers of the Cotton States and International Exposition graced Walter G. Cooper’s official history of the event. Mrs. Thompson’s portrait also appeared on the cover of a piece of sheet music titled “The Southern Beauty Waltz Song” today is in the Special Collection Library at Duke University.

March 28, 1931: Atlanta Girl Scouts celebrated its new headquarters on the sixth floor of Rich’s Incorporated. The commodious space was adjacent to the Rich’s bookstore. The previous headquarters was in the Wesley Memorial Church building.

March 29, 1945: Rose Louise Hovic, better known as Gypsy Rose Lee, played a special engagement at The Fox Theater. The vaudeville act was described by critics as an artistic take-off on the old burlesque girl. She was also an actress, author, and playwright whose 1957 memoir was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy.  During her Fox interview she said, “One of these days I’m going to retire and write and keep house.”