Street Art Stories: 3 people who keep Pittsburgh and Adair Park shining

Mural by George F. Baker III (detail). (All photos in this story by Arthur Rudick) Atlanta’s Pittsburgh and Adair Park neighborhoods host some of the city’s most active street art scenes. These three people helped make that happen. :: How did Atlanta’s Pittsburgh and Adair Park neighborhoods become two of the city’s best venues for street art viewing? Let’s start from the beginning: In the 1890s, an African American neighborhood south of Atlanta lived under a pervasive pall of smoke from the nearby Pegram Railroad Yard. The neighborhood’s nickname of “Pittsburgh” was probably not intended as a compliment, as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was one of America’s most polluted cities at that time. Immediately to the west, the all-white neighborhood of Adair Park was developed largely by real-estate speculator George Washington Adair, who increased the value of his property by building a horse-drawn trolly line to downtown. In the 1960s and 1970s, both Pittsburgh and Adair Park fell into decline, then rebounded economically in the 2000s. In 2018, the twin neighborhoods began their metamorphosis into a street art hot spot when Mutiny Artwx, a creative space hosting artist studios, sponsored the Artoberfest mural festival along a 600-foot-long wall at MET Atlanta. Today,...