Pedestrian

By Thomas Swofford

Piece description from the artist

This powerful image haunts of the past. A well-dressed pedestrian crosses the famed Peachtree Street at the corner of History and History. To the right you can see 200 Peachtree street, the Macy’s Department Strore. The history goes further. Before Macy’s, the corner was occupied by the finest of the fine, Davison-Paxon department store. R.H. Macy purchased the store in 1927 and built the iconic building you see today.
To the left, you can the edges of the Ellis Hotel, formerly the Winecoff Hotel. The Winecoff Hotel hosted the deadliest hotel fire in the history of the United States, killing 119 occupants. The hotel was labeled as “absolutely fireproof.” While that may have been true, its interiors were highly combustible and the a single stairway exit left the occupants trapped and leaping from the windows. One survivors fall was the subject of the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for photography, captured by an amateur photographer from Georgia Tech. This fire paved the way for significant changes in North American building codes including, but not limited to, multiple means of egress.
The frame and the main subject’s attire, stature and stride under the Peachtree Street sign pull from the rich history of Atlanta and give you a modern image with the ghosts of Atlanta’s past.