Elizabeth Street

The inaugural ASNP entry. Let me know what y'all think. Here goes nothing! -Kurt

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Elizabeth Street is a street in Inman Park. It runs north-south from Freedom Park to Dekalb Avenue. It's had this name since at least 1889.

Elizabeth Street on Google Maps

Other Names

Elizabeth Avenue (1890s variant)

Name Origins

Elizabeth Street was named for Mary Elizabeth Hurt Jones (1824-1882), who once owned the Joel Hurt Cottage on Elizabeth Street, one of the oldest homes still standing in Atlanta. Elizabeth Jones's first cousin was the father of Inman Park developer Joel Hurt. In the early 1870s, Elizabeth and her husband, James Vickers Jones, moved to Atlanta and built a house in the heart of modern-day Inman Park. James died in 1879 and Elizabeth sold the house and property to Joel Hurt in June 1882. She died just a few weeks later at age 58 and was buried in the Hurt-Jones family plot in Oakland Cemetery.

The Joel Hurt Cottage c. 1890
(Credit: Tommy Jones)

The legacy of Elizabeth's house continued long after her life. In the late 1880s, Joel Hurt enlarged and remodeled the house in the Queen Anne architectural style. It's believed that Hurt and his family lived there from 1887 until 1904, when they moved to a newly built mansion at 167 Elizabeth St. NE. Elizabeth Jones's house, located at 117 Elizabeth St. NE, is known today as the Joel Hurt Cottage.

Sources:
Jones, Tommy H. Joel Hurt Cottage.
Marr, Christine, and Sharon Foster Jones. (2008). Inman Park (Images of America: Georgia). Arcadia. (p. 12)

Name Sightings

The earliest sighting of Elizabeth Street I've made is in Polk's 1889 Atlanta City Directory (p. 179). It's first listed as Elizabeth Avenue, though by the early 1900s the name settled into the present Elizabeth Street. There's no mention of the street in Polk's 1888 ACD, suggesting the street was first named in 1889. Possibly Joel was moved to name a street in honor of his cousin after she passed away in 1882.

Related Streets

Hurt Street is directly east of Elizabeth Street and runs parallel.