Atlantic Station

This guide to Atlantic Station in Atlanta opens with a puzzle: the steel mill that once stood here kept its furnaces running even as its workforce shrank from fourteen hundred employees to four hundred. It follows Atlantic Steel back to its 1901 founding as a maker of wagon wheels and cotton bale ties, through decades of foreign competition and a Canadian owner who kept the plant limping along rather than pay to deal with what was building up underground. You'll hear how the mill finally closed for good in 1998, leaving behind one of the largest contaminated industrial sites in the country. Stand at the plaza's central lawn and picture the assembly lines that once ran beneath your feet.