ATLANTA — Did you know Collins Street, just off the Georgia State Greenway, was once lined with houses of ill repute? Or that Sparks Hall stands atop the location of Atlanta’s first pottery workshop, established in 1846? Or that Martin Luther King Jr. once gave a speech in Hurt Park?
Histories just like those, and the hidden gems tucked away throughout Georgia State’s Atlanta and Perimeter College campuses, are the subject of a new effort to uncover and illuminate the university’s remarkable and unique connections to the communities it calls home.
Dubbed Hidden Gems, the project is one of dozens of initiatives under the university’s new 10-year strategic plan, BluePrint to 2033: Our Place, Our Time.
“The goal of Hidden Gems is to highlight historical sites and events on each campus, as well as lesser-known programs, spaces and resources that help define GSU’s identity, foster community and enrich the student experience,” said Michael Sanseviro, vice president for Student Engagement at Georgia State and co-leader on the project with Vice President for Public Relations and Marketing Communications Jo Ann Herold.
Among the initial steps of rolling out Hidden Gems was the launch of the Hidden Histories website, which collects a number of virtual tours that help students and visitors discover the rich stories that took place where students, faculty and staff learn, work, live and play.
The tours, developed in collaboration with faculty and students in Georgia State’s History Department, student innovation fellows, the University Library, the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Online Education and others, highlight historic buildings, streets, folk life, landmarks and events, including those that took place during the civil rights movement. One module focuses on the 1906 race massacre, three days of violence that erupted and spread from Five Points, then the center of the city’s business district.
“While we all, of course, embrace the Georgia State of today, we never want to forget the challenges we had to overcome as we became the Georgia State of today,” Sanseviro said. “We also want to make sure students don’t forget things that happened in our spaces.”
Among the ongoing phases of the Hidden Gems project is the launch and maintenance of interactive maps that detail the unique spaces on Georgia State’s campuses today.
The Atlanta Campus map and interactive tour features more than a dozen stops — from the Student Center to Center Parc Stadium. The virtual tour stop at Hurt Park, for example, showcases three different images from three different points in time in the park’s history: a visit by Dwight D. Eisenhower, King’s 1963 rally speech and the ribbon-cutting event that followed Georgia State’s 2022 park renovation project.
And more is on the way.
The Hidden Gems project has also been piloted as part of GSU 1010, the university’s first-year orientation course, with an assignment that asks teams of students to find hidden gems already highlighted by the project and to bring back and present to their classmates gems they may have found that aren’t already included.
And as the implementation phase of the project continues, interactive maps with virtual tours will be added to highlight hidden gems and histories associated with each of the five Perimeter College campuses — Alpharetta, Clarkston, Decatur, Dunwoody and Newton.
“We want to make sure this is implemented across all our campuses and that we’re leveraging all of our tools to educate our students, faculty and staff about these hidden gems that we have,” Herold said. “We want to make sure every student, every employee, everyone who visits has an opportunity to learn and remember the history and get to know the special places that make our campuses vibrant and unique.”
To follow along, visit the Hidden Histories website.
To learn more about other initiatives associated with the strategic plan, visit strategic.gsu.edu.