Snapshots of Tech

Georgia Tech was founded 20 years after the Civil War as a two-building trade school, educating a class of just over 100 in an effort to create a competitive industrialized economy in the South. Today, the school hosts nearly 50,000 undergraduate and graduate students studying computing, engineering, the sciences, business, liberal arts, and design on a sprawling campus in Midtown Atlanta — and online. These maps and photos depict moments in Tech’s history illustrating the institute’s growth over 139 years in geography, academics, inclusivity, and community relations.

After the Confederacy lost the Civil War, the “New South” movement emerged, championed by journalist Henry Grady, to rebuild an industrialized South that could compete economically with Northern states. As part of this movement, the Georgia General Assembly established a technological school through the passage of a bill by Representative Nathaniel Harris in 1885. After a site selection process, the Georgia School of Technology opened at the far north end of Atlanta as a vocational school offering one major: mechanical engineering. Only white men were admitted to the school, and all students attended shop classes in the mornings and classes in the afternoons. While the shop building (left) has since burned down, the classroom building (right) remains as today’s Tech Tower.

Over time, Tech’s campus steadily grew from two buildings at the corner of North Avenue and Cherry Street to eventually encompass nearly 400 acres. This map shows Tech’s campus in 1912 as it expanded northward to Third Street (today Bobby Dodd Way/Freshman Hill). The original Grant Field can be seen to the right. The aerial photo from the late 1950s shows a growing Tech campus, where the Skiles building and the Price Gilbert Library can be identified. Hemphill Avenue and adjacent neighborhoods remain standing throughout today’s West Campus.

Elizabeth Herndon and Diane Michel were the first two women to enroll at Georgia Tech. The admission of women to the institute was spearheaded by President Blake Van Leer, whose daughter was barred from studying at Tech because of her gender. When the president proposed allowing the admission of women in 1947, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia voted against the change. 64% of students opposed the change, with students, administrators, and regents quoted as saying women would be “distracting” or were “looking for husbands.” In 1952, the Board of Regents voted to allow co-ed admission, but only for programs not offered at other USG schools. This policy continued until 1968, when women’s admission was expanded to all programs. Today, Georgia Tech graduates more female engineers than any other university in the U.S.

The Interstate Highway System was largely built under the urban renewal philosophy of New York urban planner Robert Moses that highways “must go right through cities and not around them,” intentionally breaking up majority-Black communities in urban centers. The Downtown Connector (I-75/85), built in stages from 1948 to 1964, cut through neighborhoods including Midtown, Downtown, Mechanicsville, Summerhill, and Peoplestown. The top image shows land beginning to be cleared north of Downtown, and the bottom image shows a close-up east of Tech’s campus.

Van Leer continued his support for inclusivity
throughout his presidency. In 1956, Tech’s football team
was scheduled to face the Pittsburgh Panthers at the
Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. Georgia Governor Marvin
Griffin attempted to prevent the Jackets from playing
the game as the Panthers had a Black athlete on their team, saying “we cannot make the slightest concession to the enemy.” President Van Leer responded: “either we’re going to the Sugar Bowl or you can find yourself another damn president of Georgia Tech.” Four years after Van Leer’s death, Georgia Tech admitted Ford C. Greene, Ralph A. Long Jr., and Lawrence Williams to the institute (pictured above), becoming the first Southern institution to integrate peacefully and without a court order. The first Black women were not admitted to the institute for ten more years. Today, only 6% of Tech students identify as Black, the lowest among Georgia’s five largest public universities.

In 1947, Lester Maddox opened the Pickrick Restaurant on Hemphill Avenue (at the present site of Georgia Tech’s EcoCommons). A staunch segregationist, he banned entry to Blacks as well as white “integrationists.” After the signature of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, three African Americans attempted to enter the restaurant and were chased out by Maddox (right, with pistol) and his son (middle, with pickaxe handle). The next year, Maddox closed the restaurant in refusal to comply with the federal civil rights law. He later ran for governor in 1996 with the support of the Ku Klux Klan and was selected by the Georgia General Assembly when no candidate won a majority.

The 1996 Summer Olympic Games were held in Atlanta, leading to development throughout the city in preparation. Georgia Tech hosted the Olympic Village, housing 15,000 athletes in dorms, apartments, and Greek housing. Several apartment buildings — Center Street, Crecine, Eighth Street, the Fourth Street Apartments, Maulding, Nelson-Shell, North Avenue, and Zbar — were built in the lead-up to the games, nearly doubling the student housing capacity. Tech’s campus was also the site of the aquatics and boxing venues.

During the Olympics, much of campus was blocked off to traffic, and President G. Wayne Clough had to modify his commute to drive through southern Midtown, which had long since been separated from campus by the Downtown Connector. Aiming to revitalize the then-blighted area defined by vacant lots and derelict buildings, the institute purchased eight acres of land to develop Tech Square, with shops and offices connected to the rest of campus by a revamped park-like Fifth Street Bridge. The project was announced in 2000 and opened in 2003. Today, the area has become a booming business and residential district serving both the campus community and the broader Atlanta community. Shown above is the Fifth Street Bridge and the area that would become Tech Square.

While Georgia Tech once offered one degree, today the institute offers 36 Bachelor’s, 58 Master’s, and 39 Doctoral programs. President John Patrick Crecine, who served from 1987 to 1994, was the first president in 43 years to not come from an engineering background and led the expansion of degree programs in the social sciences and humanities. In 2014, the Online Masters of Science in Computer Science program was created, aiming to provide a more accessible form of computer science education around the world. Today, the program represents a quarter of Tech’s students and over half the institute’s growth in enrollment over the past ten years.

Issued in November 2023, the Georgia Tech Comprehensive Campus Plan was developed to provide recommendations for how to accommodate Tech’s projected growth in enrollment over the next 10 years. Unlike past campus plans that expanded the campus footprint, the CCP suggests that Tech maximize the utility of land already owned by the institute and integrate further with neighboring communities as an “anchor institution.” A major proposed development is the creation of Arts Square, an arts district whose plans currently include a new performing arts center and production studios next to the developing Science Square. The plan also includes increased first-year student housing, the possibility of removing roads and parking lots to create a carfree campus core, and the addition of new sporting and recreational facilities between Tech Parkway and Marietta Street. While it is unlikely that every proposed change will occur, the plan provides insight into campus leadership’s direction for the physical development of the school as it approaches its 150th anniversary.