The whites-only Techwood Homes replaced an integrated settlement of low-income people known as Tanyard Bottom or Tech Flats.

It was completed on August 15, 1936,[2] but was dedicated on November 29 of the previous year by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

[4] The complex was designed by Georgia Tech alumnus and architect Flippen David Burge of Burge and Stevens (later Stevens & Wilkinson),[5] and organized by Charles Forrest Palmer, a real estate developer who had become an expert on public housing and would later head up both the newly created Atlanta Housing Authority and the Chamber of Commerce.

[9] The Public Works Administration replaced the shantytown with 604 units for white families only, with income qualifiers out of the range of many former inhabitants.

Only 78 of the original residents were able to move back into Centennial Place, which had far fewer subsidized units than Techwood Homes.