The housing area known as Factory Lot, which eventually came to be known as Cabbagetown, was developed in 1885 for the workers of the Fulton Cotton Mill, many of whom left the countryside and North Georgia Mountains for the promise of steady jobs in the city. Built by German-Jewish immigrant Jacob Elsas, the endeavor eventually spanned an empire of textile mills across the country before its eventual sale, and final demise in the 1970’s. During the Civil War, a steel Rolling Mill was the dominant structure on the site, and the crater left by the Confederate Army’s hasty yet explosive retreat (literally, lest Sherman commandeer the munitions) is a still visible low dip on Boulevard near the Potter’s Field. Boom!
Today, the area is a historic district (U.S. National Register of Historic Places), and the old Cotton Mill is one the nation’s largest industrial loft complexes with a dozen repurposed factory structures and iconic twin smoke stacks. Just under 80 acres, the community itself consists mostly of shotgun shacks and cottages built for the labor pool. Flanked by Oakland Cemetery, Memorial Drive, and CSX Hulsey Yard, the neighborhood shares Pearl Street as its border with Reynoldstown (purportedly the first community in Atlanta founded by freed slaves).
Cabbagetown has a complicated recent history of white-v-white gentrification (c.f. “Don’t Get Captured”), and just before turn of the millennium, rampant poverty and drug addiction intertwined with urban pioneering, including the well-meaning type of artsy fringe and underground music impresarios, wherein we witnessed the rise and fall of Atlanta’s most unique rock bands. The earlier industrial era had a similar creative air as an era of marginalized Appalachian mill workers experienced economic and social isolation, with a series of setbacks including an ill-fated labor strike agitated by anti-Semitic undercurrents. In the mid-1920’s, one of those erstwhile lintheads stumbled into a recording studio on Nassau Street and cut the world’s very first hillbilly record, a regrettably awful Lost Cause minstrel arrangement that catapulted Okeh into position, launching the country music industry. Carson’s B-side answers the age old question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
Forty plus years after the stacks went smokeless, the neighborhood and adjacent Cotton Mill loft complex has a mixed upscale urban crowd, drawn to the artistic vibe, funky little Victorians on narrow streets, with quaint tolerance for quirky freaks and geeks, and admirable dedication to an academic understanding of the underdog.
Q: Why is it called Cabbagetown?
A: Marketing.
Don’t believe the hype. There was never a flipped truck, and the taxi story was always a stretch (rest in peace, Cliff). Cabbagetown is indeed a loose translation of “Poor People Food Place”, but who on Earth would coin it and how would that stick?
We’re relying on Effie Dodd’s declaration in the theatrical script for “Cabbagetown: 3 Women”, as based off the out-of-print cookbook, “Cabbagetown Families, Cabbagetown Food”. Ms Dodd posits it was the work of Church Women United’s Neighborhood House on Savannah Street (more recently, as during the 2018 production of “3 Women” by the Patch Works, the location of Tapestry Ministry homeless outreach).
The Neighborhood House was a beloved institution, so we don’t want to throw shade. Sometimes a good story is what it takes, right? Apparently there was an over-enthusiastic fundraiser who figured painting it on thick would be the best bet to pull heartstrings & encourage more donations.
Indeed, many have been enamored by the moniker’s poetic woe mixed with a blooming hope [ed – guilty as charged], but it began as a pitch, and she apparently pulled it out of thin air. Or maybe someone took a trip to Toronto, felt a kinship with the plight on Parliament, and put it in her head. Regardless, the literati love them some cannery row callbacks, and photographers can’t get enough barefoot kids, but… perhaps isn’t the whole story. There probably weren’t many millionaires, but the vivid characterization of poverty-stricken hillfolk dependent on charity wasn’t entirely accurate, not pervasive across the population of Factory Lot. As a proud Long once told me, “Hell, we didn’t all live on Gaskill Street.”
Sometimes we judge things by their aftermath, or the people left millin’ around when the party’s over. Cabbagetown is a thousand times more complex and beautiful than any shorthand fishwrapper can contain before the jump.