Full Answer
What is the history of Athens Georgia?
Athens, Georgia was founded on December 1806. In 1860, slaves made up over half of the population in Athens, with 1,892 living in the area. During the Civil War from 1861 to 1865 there was no major battles within the Athens area.
Why did the Civil Rights Movement start in Athens Georgia?
In an effort to see more racial progress, Athens became a city in which memorable protests in support of the Civil Rights Movement took place. Many black Athenians to this day remember the protests that took place many times in 1964 at the Varsity on West Broad Street in Athens, Georgia.
How did the city of Athens change over time?
Following World War II the city began to grow again as people migrated from the villages and islands to find work. Greek entry into the European Union in 1981 brought a flood of new investment to the city, but also increasing social and environmental problems.
How did Athens Georgia unify its government?
You can help by adding to it. (March 2009) In 1990, the City of Athens and Clarke County voters voted to unify their governments, becoming only the second unified government in Georgia and the 28th nationwide. Legislative: The government is headed by an elected mayor and 10 elected commissioners from 10 equally divided districts.
What is the history of Athens GA?
Clarke County was established in 1801 and named after Elijah Clarke, a Revolutionary War hero, and Athens was established as a town in 1805. Athens was named by John Milledge, later governor of Georgia, after Athens, Greece, the center of learning in the classical world and home to the academies of Plato and Aristotle.
When did Athens GA became a city?
December 8, 1806The City of Athens was incorporated on December 8, 1806. The University of Georgia had opened for classes in 1801, and the city was named in honor of the center of higher learning that had flourished in classical Greece.
What is Athens GA known for?
Nicknamed the Classic City, the college town of Athens is best known as the home to the University of Georgia, whose football team, the Georgia Bulldogs, won the 2021 College Football National Championship.
Why is Athens GA called the Classic City?
The town was named by the late governor John Milledge for Athens, Greece, known as the center of classical learning, thus giving Athens, Georgia, its nickname: the Classic City.
Who founded Athens Georgia?
John MilledgeOn July 25, 1801, John Milledge, one of the trustees and later governor of Georgia, bought 633 acres (256 hectares) from Daniel Easley and donated it to the university. Milledge named the surrounding area Athens after the city that was home to the Platonic Academy of Plato and Aristotle in Greece.
When was Athens founded?
The first settlement of Athens 3000 BC was situated on the rock of Acropolis. According to the tradition, Athens was founded, when the king Theseus united in a state several settlements of Attica. The last king of ancient Athens was Kodros, who sacrificed his life in order to save the homeland.
How was Athens founded?
The first settlers in Athens were from various ethnic groups that were organized in several kingdoms. They established themselves near the crag, which later would become the Acropolis. According to the Greek mythology, Cecrops, who was half man and half serpent, founded Athens and became the first king.
How do you say Athens in English?
Break 'Athens' down into sounds: [ATH] + [UHNZ] - say it out loud and exaggerate the sounds until you can consistently produce them.
What is the meaning of Athens?
/ ˈæθ ɪnz / PHONETIC RESPELLING. noun. a city in and the capital of Greece, in the southeastern part. Greek A·the·nai [ah-thee-ne] . Greater Athens, a metropolitan area comprising the city of Athens, Piraeus, and several residential suburbs.
What is the oldest building in Athens Georgia?
The Church-Waddel-Brumby House also has the distinction of being the oldest surviving residence in Athens.
What Indian tribes lived in Athens GA?
The primary tribes in Athens were the Creek and Cherokee. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, a series of treaties and the Indian Removal Act of 1830 removed all of their land ownership by the 19th century.
Is Athens GA a nice place to live?
Athens, Georgia is arguably one of the best places to live in the country that not many people are even considering! If you want to live in a city where you can live, work and play while remaining in a comfortable financial situation you will want to check out Athens!
What is the oldest building in Athens Georgia?
The Church-Waddel-Brumby House also has the distinction of being the oldest surviving residence in Athens.
Was Athens ever the capital of Georgia?
Georgia has had five different capitals in its history. The first was Savannah, the seat of government during British colonial rule, followed by Augusta, Louisville, Milledgeville, and Atlanta, the capital city from 1868 to the present day.
What Indian tribes lived in Athens GA?
The primary tribes in Athens were the Creek and Cherokee. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, a series of treaties and the Indian Removal Act of 1830 removed all of their land ownership by the 19th century.
Is Athens Georgia a big city?
118.2 mi²Athens / Area
What was the significance of Athens?
Athens was a major gathering point for Confederate enlistees and a haven for refugees from active theaters of war. Athens textile industries produced great quantities of Confederate uniforms, many put together by the Ladies Aid Society. When the war began university enrollment stood at 113, but in 1863, with students and faculty needed in the army, the university closed and remained so until after the war. The Confederacy requisitioned all campus buildings to house soldiers and refugees. The chapel became an army hospital and in 1864 a prison for 431 Northern soldiers taken nearby.
Where did the Athenians put their money?
During the war some prosperous Athenians placed their money in northern and European banks. Their capital, combined with wartime profits from the production of armaments and Confederate uniforms and a stockpile of cotton accumulated behind Union lines, allowed Athens to recover rather quickly from the economic hardships of war. Manufacturing and trade flourished.
What was the population of Athens in 1980?
The Athens area grew rapidly during and after World War II (1941-45), and by 1980 the population of Athens and its suburbs was 62,896. From 1951 through the 1970s outside industry moved in. Dairy Pak, Gold Kist, General Time, and Westinghouse built manufacturing plants and brought executives to Athens as Beechwood and other suburban neighborhoods emerged. A grant from the Kellogg Foundation built the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, one of the first conference centers in the nation. The Navy Supply Corps School moved in 1954 from Bayonne, New Jersey, to the old State Normal School campus and remained there until 2010. (The UGA Health Sciences Campus opened on the site in 2012.) In 1958 the Athens Area Vocational-Technical School (later Athens Technical College) first opened its doors in former army barracks located downtown. The university, which had swelled with returning veterans after World War II, also benefited from the coming of age of the postwar baby boom generation, reaching an enrollment of 23,470 in 1980.
What was the most important thing about Athens in the early 20th century?
The early twentieth century was a prosperous era for Athenians. Merchants and bankers built new establishments downtown, and electric lights and water service spread across the townscape. When the first automobile appeared in Athens in 1899, the race for greater mobility began. The population of Athens doubled between 1900 and 1940 from 10,245 to 20,650. The Beaux-Arts city hall completed in 1904 rose atop the town’s highest point. James Knox Taylor (architect of the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington, D.C.) designed the Federal Building, which was completed the following year across from city hall. Then it housed the federal court and post office; today it is a bank. A. Ten Eyck Brown designed the county courthouse, completed in 1914. Three multistory buildings, the highest standing at nine stories, changed the Athens skyline between 1908 and 1913.
What was the main source of the textile industry in Athens?
By the 1820s Athens had become a center in the South for textile manufacture, powered by the Oconee River and supplied by the vast cotton plantations nearby. Prominent residents included not only mill owners, merchants, and college professors but also the aristocrats and planters who came to Athens to educate their sons at the university and to enjoy the culture and society the college encouraged.
What is Athens known for?
Chosen in 1801 as the site for the first chartered state university in the nation, Athens is known for its culture and diversity. Georgia’s “Classic City” has preserved many of its historic neighborhoods and landmarks, and its largely intact nineteenth-century townscape abuts the historic North Campus of UGA. Today Athens is the center for commerce and trade, health services, and cultural arts for all of northeast Georgia. The city struggles to maintain its distinctive sense of place in the face of rapid growth and development.
When did the University of Athens reopen?
In January 1866 the university reopened, and by 1868 returning veterans swelled enrollment to 299, the highest level yet. Federal dollars first came to Athens when the university became a land-grant institution in 1872, enabling the creation of the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. As the university began to grow from a small, classical college for the elite into a larger, more varied institution serving the entire state, the town grew as well.
What is the history of Athens?
Jump to navigation Jump to search. Aspect of history. The Acropolis of Athens by Leo von Klenze (1846) Athens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for perhaps 5,000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city ...
What happened to Athens in 1200 BC?
Unlike other Mycenaean centers, such as Mycenae and Pylos, it is unclear whether Athens suffered destruction in about 1200 BC, an event traditionally attributed to a Dorian invasion (though now commonly attributed to a systems collapse, part of the Late Bronze Age collapse ). The Athenians always maintained that they were 'pure' Ionians with no Dorian element. However, Athens, like many other Bronze Age settlements, went into economic decline for around 150 years following this.
What was the size of the ancient city of Athens?
The ancient walled city encompassed an area measuring about 2 km (1 mi) from east to west and slightly less than that from north to south, although at its peak the ancient city had suburbs extending well beyond these walls. The Acropolis was situated just south of the centre of this walled area.
How many people were in Athens during the Peloponnesian War?
According to Thucydides, the Athenian citizens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (5th century BC) numbered 40,000 , making with their families a total of 140,000 people in all. The metics, i.e. those who did not have citizen rights and paid for the right to reside in Athens, numbered a further 70,000, whilst slaves were estimated at between 150,000 and 400,000. Meetings in the Athenian assembly could be attended by all Athenian male citizens, if they were over the age of twenty. Regular meetings were held in the Athenian assembly, about 40 per year. All male citizens that attended a meeting, had the right to speak and vote on the subject matter discussed at the meeting. Magistrates were elected at such meetings. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, the city's population began to decrease as Greeks migrated to the Hellenistic empires in the east.
How did Athens get its name?
The name of Athens, connected to the name of its patron goddess Athena, originates from an earlier Pre-Greek language. The origin myth explaining how Athens acquired this name through the legendary contest between Poseidon and Athena was described by Herodotus, Apollodorus, Ovid, Plutarch, Pausanias and others. It even became the theme of the sculpture on the West pediment of the Parthenon. Both Athena and Poseidon requested to be patrons of the city and to give their name to it, so they competed with offering the city one gift each. Poseidon produced a spring by striking the ground with his trident, symbolizing naval power.
Why did Athens fail to host the 1996 Olympics?
Athens had some of the worst traffic congestion and air pollution in the world at that time. This posed a new threat to the ancient monuments of Athens, as traffic vibration weakened foundations and air pollution corroded marble. The city's environmental and infrastructure problems were the main reason why Athens failed to secure the 1996 Centenary Olympic Games. Following the failed attempt to secure the 1996 Olympics, both the city of Athens and the Greek government, aided by European Union funds, undertook major infrastructure projects such as the new Athens Airport and a new metro system. The city also tackled air pollution by restricting the use of cars in the center of the city. As a result, Athens won its bid to host the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. Despite the skepticism of many observers, the games were a success and brought renewed prestige and tourism revenue to Athens. The 2008 Greek Riots began in Athens following the killing of a 15-year old student by an officer.
When was Athens inhabited?
Athens has been inhabited from Neolithic times, possibly from the end of the fourth millennium BC, or over 5,000 years. By 1412 BC, the settlement had become an important center of the Mycenaean civilization and the Acropolis was the site of a major Mycenaean fortress whose remains can be recognised from sections of the characteristic Cyclopean walls. On the summit of the Acropolis, below the later Erechtheion, cuttings in the rock have been identified as the location of a Mycenaean palace. Between 1250 and 1200 BC, to feed the needs of the Mycenaean settlement, a staircase was built down a cleft in the rock to reach a water supply that was protected from enemy incursions, comparable to similar works carried out at Mycenae.
Who bought the land in Athens?
On July 25, John Milledge, one of the trustees and later governor of Georgia, bought 633 acres (256 hectares) from Daniel Easley and donated it to the university. Milledge named the surrounding area Athens after the city that was home to the Platonic Academy of Plato and Aristotle in Greece.
When did Athens become a city?
Athens officially became a town in December 1806 with a government made up of a three-member commission. The university and town continued to grow with cotton mills fueling the industrial and commercial development. Athens became known as the " Manchester of the South" after the city in England known for its mills.
What was the first state university in Georgia?
On January 27, 1785, the Georgia General Assembly granted a charter by Abraham Baldwin for the University of Georgia as the first state-supported university.
What was the most important city in the 1830s?
In the 1830s and 1840s, transportation developments and the growing influence of the University of Georgia made Athens one of the state's most important cities as the Antebellum Period neared the height of its development.
What state is Athens in?
Athens, Georgia. This article is about the city in the U.S. state of Georgia. For other uses, see Athens (disambiguation). / 33.950°N 83.383°W / 33.950; -83.383. / 33.950°N 83.383°W / 33.950; -83.383. Athens, officially Athens–Clarke County, is a consolidated city–county and college town in the U.S. state of Georgia.
What is the cool town of Athens?
The city is also known as a recording site for such groups as the Atlanta-based Indigo Girls. The 2020 book Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia , Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture describes Athens as the model of the indie culture of the 1980s.
How many hospitals are there in Athens?
Athens is served by two major hospitals, the 359-bed Piedmont Athens Regional and the 170-bed St. Mary's Hospital. The city is also served by the smaller 42-bed Landmark Hospital of Athens. Piedmont Athens Regional was formerly Athens Regional Medical Center before being acquired by Piedmont Healthcare in 2016. In March 2018, Piedmont Healthcare announced a $171 million capital investment project for Piedmont Athens Regional which would include the addition of a fourth story to the Prince 2 building as well as the demolition of the 100 year old 1919 Tower in order to make space for a new, state of the art, seven story tower. The entire project is slated for a 2022 completion.
Why did Athens become a city?
In an effort to see more racial progress , Athens became a city in which memorable protests in support of the Civil Rights Movement took place. Many black Athenians to this day remember the protests that took place many times in 1964 at the Varsity on West Broad Street in Athens, Georgia. The protests at the Varsity were in support ...
When was the Black Athens founded?
A Short History of Black Athens. Athens, Georgia was founded on December 1806. In 1860, slaves made up over half of the population in Athens, with 1,892 living in the area. During the Civil War from 1861 to 1865 there was no major battles within the Athens area. After the Confederate soldiers were defeated, freed slaves came in masses ...
How many people died in the Oconee lynching?
One of the nine survived, but the eight who died made the Oconee lynching one of the largest ever recorded. One Athens area lynching can be recalled as particularly heinous, the Moore’s Ford lynching of July 25, 1946 near the Oconee County-Walton County line.
What were the schools in Athens after the Confederate defeat?
The Knox Institute opened in 1868, the Methodist school in 1879 and Jeruel Academy in 1881.
What were the three black newspapers in Athens?
These newspapers were the Athens Blade, the Athens Clipper, and Progressive Era . Due to an increase in black professionals, the black middle class started to emerge with the assistance of the Freedman’s Bureau.
How many black neighborhoods were there in Athens?
Athens had eight large black neighborhoods along with five smaller groups of houses where African-Americans lived. In the early 1900s, Athens’ demographic representation was almost equally split, as the city had a total of 5,190 African-American residences, and 5,055 white residences. Even with an almost equal proportion ...
Where was the Morton Building?
The Morton Building in Athens, Georgia. In addition to the “hot corner,” there were many other spots that showcased black progress.
Why did Jews settle in Athens?
After the Civil War. Following the war, a growing number of Jews settled in Athens seeking economic opportunity. Caspar Morris, who had served four years as a private in the 16th Georgia Regular Volunteers after emigrating from Filehne, came to Athens to start his own dry goods business.
When did the Jewish community in Athens grow?
The Athens Jewish community grew in the early 20th century, reaching 185 Jews by 1927, as a new generation of Jewish businessmen came to Athens. Jacob Bush moved to Athens in 1915 with his family and founded Bush Jewelers.
Where did the Jews come from in Athens?
The first Jews who settled in Athens arrived in the years before the Civil War. They came from Filehne, in the Posen area of Prussia. Moses Myers, born in Filehne in 1833, founded a dry goods business in Athens in 1858.
What was the first Jewish faculty in Athens?
Cohn was the first in a wave of Jewish faculty that have contributed significantly to the Athens Jewish community ever since. After World War II. As new manufacturing plants in the small towns surrounding Athens began to sprout up in the 1940s and 1950s, more people moved to town and the Jewish community grew.
Where is Athens located?
The city of Athens grew out of a trading settlement called Cedar Shoals located on the banks of the Oconee River in northeastern part of Georgia. This tiny village of 17 families was transformed in 1801 when the Georgia General Assembly selected Athens as the home of the recently established University of Georgia.
When did the Sterns family move to Georgia?
Around the 1950s, the Sterns family moved to town. After many years of success in business, they donated money to establish the Sterns Community House. This facility was eventually made available to the Jewish students at the University of Georgia through the Hillel Foundation.
Who was the Jewish businessman in Athens?
The most prominent Jewish businessman in Athens was Moses G. Michael. Born in Jefferson, Georgia in 1862, Michael moved to Athens with his family in 1865. By the age of 16, he had graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in engineering, the youngest graduate ever at the time.
Early History
Civil War Era
- No major battles took place in Athens during the Civil War (1861-65). The only altercations were brief skirmishes at Barber’s Creek just south of town on August 2, 1864, when the Home Guard defended the town against fragments of Stoneman’s raiders, a Union cavalry force from East Tennessee that moved into the area as an extension of the Atlanta campaign. Athens was, howe…
Late Nineteenth Century
- After the surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, Union troops occupied Athens from May 1865 until early 1866. Freepeople flocked to Athens to celebrate emancipation. Thanks in large measure to the Freedman’s Bureau, Athens became a center for secondary Black education in Georgia for more than fifty years following the war, and a significant Black middl...
Rapid Growth in The Twentieth Century
- The early twentieth century was a prosperous era for Athenians. Merchants and bankers built new establishments downtown, and electric lights and water service spread across the townscape. When the first automobile appeared in Athens in 1899, the race for greater mobility began. The population of Athens doubled between 1900 and 1940 from 10,245 to 20,650. The Beaux-Arts ci…
Recent Developments
- In 1980 Athens became a Main Street City, one of the first in the state to embrace a program for downtown revitalizationthrough the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Thanks to Historic Athens (formerly the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation), the National Register of Historic Places lists the entire downtown as a historic district. In 2006 the Athens–Clarke County Commission d…
Overview
Athens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for perhaps 5,000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BC, and its cultural achievements during the 5th century BC laid the foundations of Western civilization.
Late Antiquity
In the early 4th century AD, the eastern Roman empire began to be governed from Constantinople, and with the construction and expansion of the imperial city, many of Athens's works of art were taken by the emperors to adorn it. The Empire became Christianized, and the use of Latin declined in favour of exclusive use of Greek; in the Roman imperial period, both languages had been used. In t…
Name
The name of Athens, connected to the name of its patron goddess Athena, originates from an earlier Pre-Greek language. The origin myth explaining how Athens acquired this name through the legendary contest between Poseidon and Athena was described by Herodotus, Apollodorus, Ovid, Plutarch, Pausanias and others. It even became the theme of the sculpture on the west pediment of …
Geographical setting
There is evidence that the site on which the Acropolis ('high city') stands was first inhabited in the Neolithic period, perhaps as a defensible settlement, around the end of the fourth millennium BC or a little later. The site is a natural defensive position which commands the surrounding plains. It is located about 20 km (12 mi) inland from the Saronic Gulf, in the centre of the Cephisian Plain, a fertile va…
Athenian assembly
According to Thucydides, the Athenian citizens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (5th century BC) numbered 40,000, making with their families a total of 140,000 people in all. The metics, i.e. those who did not have citizen rights and paid for the right to reside in Athens, numbered a further 70,000, whilst slaves were estimated at between 150,000 and 400,000. Meetings in the Athenian assembly could be attended by all Athenian male citizens, if they were …
Antiquity
Athens has been inhabited from Neolithic times, possibly from the end of the fourth millennium BC, or over 5,000 years. By 1412 BC, the settlement had become an important center of the Mycenaean civilization and the Acropolis was the site of a major Mycenaean fortress whose remains can be recognised from sections of the characteristic Cyclopean walls. On the summit of the Acropolis, …
Middle Ages
The city was threatened by Saracen raids in the 8th–9th centuries—in 896, Athens was raided and possibly occupied for a short period, an event which left some archaeological remains and elements of Arabic ornamentation in contemporary buildings —but there is also evidence of a mosque existing in the city at the time. In the great dispute over Byzantine Iconoclasm, Athens is com…
Early modern period
The first Ottoman attack on Athens, which involved a short-lived occupation of the town, came in 1397, under the Ottoman generals Yaqub Pasha and Timurtash. Finally, in 1458, Athens was captured by the Ottomans under the personal leadership of Sultan Mehmed II. As the Ottoman Sultan rode into the city, he was greatly struck by the beauty of its ancient monuments and issued a
Overview
Athens, officially Athens–Clarke County, is a consolidated city–county and college town in the U.S. state of Georgia. Athens lies about 70 miles (110 kilometers) northeast of downtown Atlanta, and is a satellite city of the capital. The University of Georgia, the state's flagship public university and an R1 research institution, is in Athens and contributed to its initial growth. In 1991, a…
History
In the late 18th century, a trading settlement on the banks of the Oconee River called Cedar Shoals stood where Athens is today. On January 27, 1785, the Georgia General Assembly granted a charter by Abraham Baldwin for the University of Georgia as the first state-supported university. Georgia's control of the area was established following the Oconee War. In 1801, a committee from the univ…
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the balance has a total area of 118.2 square miles (306.1 km ), of which 117.8 square miles (305.1 km ) is land and 0.5 square miles (1.3 km ) (0.41%) is water.
Athens lies within the humid subtropical climate zone, with hot, humid summers and mild to moderately cold winters. Annual rainfall averages 49.7 inches (1,260 mm). Light to moderate sn…
Demographics
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 127,315 people, 51,640 households, and 23,615 families residing in the city.
As of the census of 2010, there were 100,266 people, 39,239 households, and 19,344 families residing in the city. The population density was 851.5 people per square mile (328.8/km ). There were 41,633 housing units at an average density of 353.6 per square mile (136.5/km ). The racia…
Government
In 1990, the City of Athens and Clarke County voters voted to unify their governments, becoming only the second unified government in Georgia and the 28th nationwide.
• Legislative: The government is headed by an elected mayor and 10 elected commissioners from 10 equally divided districts. Previously, they have been formed from 8 geographical districts and 2 super-districts covering districts 1–4 and 5–8
Law
The Athens-Clarke County Police Department (ACCPD) was formed by the merger of the law enforcement agencies of the City of Athens and Clarke County. As of February 2019 , Cleveland Lee Spruill Sr. was sworn in as the new Chief of Police. ACCPD is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) and was named a "Gold Standard Agency" in 2013. ACCPD's 911 Communications Center is also CALEA certified and has reached …
Economy
Athens is home to a growing number of young technology companies including Docebo, Roundsphere, and Cogent Education. The city is also home to more established technology companies such as Partner Software, Peachtree Medical Billing, and Digital Insight.
Athens is home to several pharmaceutical manufacturing and biotechnology c…
Arts and culture
The Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia has been, since 1982, the official state art museum. Culture coexists with the university students in creating an art scene, music scene, and intellectual environment. The city has music venues, restaurants, bars, and coffee shops that cater to its creative climate.