Great Atlanta fire of 1917

At 12:46 a call came from a small warehouse just north of Decatur Street between Fort and Hilliard, and the crew sent to inspect it found a stack of burning mattresses, but had no firefighting equipment with them.

[citation needed] The fire spread quickly up to Edgewood Avenue and from there throughout the main residential areas of Sweet Auburn, sparing little.

A corridor was burned due north between Jackson (now Parkway and Charles Allen) and Boulevard, with a few prominent bulges at Highland and just south of Ponce de Leon Avenue.

Around 4:00 in the afternoon, fire-fighters had begun to stall the fire by using dynamite to destroy many homes along Pine, Boulevard and finally Ponce de Leon.

Where large estates with spacious front yards had been, along the entire stretch of Boulevard up to Ponce, dozens of two- and three-storey apartment buildings that hugged the sidewalk were built.

Except for where single family homes were quickly rebuilt north of Ponce de Leon, the character of this large area of Atlanta was changed forever.