They were constructed on the site of Buttermilk Bottom, a black neighborhood flattened 25 years earlier for “urban renewal.” Buttermilk Bottom, I came to learn, was part of a historically African-American district, the Old Fourth Ward. This larger area encompassed not only rickety places ripe for slum clearance but also thriving Auburn Avenue, black Atlanta’s principle civic and commercial artery (where Martin Luther King Jr. was born), as well as many acres of modest houses and apartment buildings. Also, during segregation when this was solidly a working-class neighborhood, there were lots of factories and warehouses. Railroad lines delineated the district from working-class white Cabbagetown to the south and affluent white Inman Park to the east. Downtown was west. The northern boundary was North Avenue, with what’s now called Midtown lying beyond it.

Bridging yesterday and today Clockwise from top left: An artist peers out of the Virginia Cotton Docks Lofts and Galleries on John Wesley Dobbs Avenue, salad days at Rathbun's on Krog Street, a revelation from the past on Auburn Avenue, coffee time at Javaology on Edgewood Avenue, the creative confines of Inertia Films on Ezzard Street, and Dynamic Metals Lofts on Edgewood Avenue. Previous spread: sharing a laugh at Studioplex on Auburn Avenue.

Now Atlantans of all ethnicities clamor for urban life, and the Old Fourth Ward is experiencing real renewal. Old houses are being renovated, new ones built. Industrial spaces are being converted to loft apartments. Shops and cafes are opening. Recently I moved deeper into the district, to a small street-oriented building like many going up here with neither a perimeter fence nor an exercise room. I bought a bicycle, to replace my former workout routine on the apartment complex’s StairMaster. On the first morning I went for a ride, I realized I’d finally arrived in the city. Moms were walking kids to school. People dressed for work were striding toward downtown or waiting for the bus. Others strolled out for coffee and the paper, or were working up a sweat on foot or bike or skates.

SOMETHING OLd, something new A relaxing time on the patio at Two Urban Licks on Ralph McGill Boulevard, Aida Rentas of the Grassroots Gift Shop on Edgewood Avenue and a stroll by new development on Highland Avenue.

There is still industry in the Old Fourth Ward—a candy factory, a mammoth laundry. But many industrial buildings now house media firms or are being replaced with mixed-use developments. It’s hard to tell which big Victorian houses on Auburn Avenue were there when King was a kid and which ones are new. There are still dilapidated shotgun shacks behind rusty fences, vacant lots overgrown with kudzu. But just beyond an apartment house where people without air conditioning pass warm evenings on the stoop, homes priced from $700,000 are going up. Market forces may push out the poor, but it’s unthinkable that the Old Fourth Ward will ever again be all one color—or a touristy historic district. It’s too jumbled, with its Craftsman bungalows and loft conversions, teensy old duplexes and overblown new McMansions, trendy wine bars and storefront meat-and-threes. As healthy urban places do, the neighborhood makes room for all—even for the suburban-style complexes that were an imperfect first attempt, 15 years ago, at its revival.