See this magnolia? It’s actually two adjacent trees on the bank of a former railroad ROW (to the right). Now the ROW is the BeltLine, a pedestrian and bicycle corridor, with landscaping by Trees Atlanta. To the left is a shopping center with a Whole Foods and a Staples (guess which one gets more traffic 🤣). Delivery trucks are the most common traffic along this route behind the stores (and us when the “front” is clogged).

Here’s a ca. 1950 photo from Georgia State’s archives of the Ponce de Leon Ballpark. The info that follows is from 2020 article by Adam C. Johnson (here). In 1890, there was a lake where the field is, and the magnolia was already there. The ballfield was first built in 1907. The photo shows the version built in 1923. If you were sitting behind home plate, you were looking straight at the magnolias. Johnson writes:

If a baseball hit the magnolia tree and bounced back into the field, then the ball was in play because, per the rules, it had to pass through or remain in the tree to be a home run. To this day, the Spiller Magnolia Tree is the only tree in baseball that has been in play, and [Babe] Ruth and Eddie Matthews are the only confirmed players to have hit home runs into it.

Recently, Trees Atlanta has cloned the magnolias, and planted the new trees along the BeltLine.

End of baseball trivia.

BTW, that big building to the far right facing the ballfield was a huge multi-story Sears that had a side track from the RR for deliveries. The building recently was redeveloped and is now Ponce City Market.

This entry was posted in anthropology, archaeology, architecture on Friday, 1 March 2024 at 8:22 pm.
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