View of buildings at the old Atlanta Prison Farm site, courtesy Atlanta History Center 2023.
The Atlanta Prison Farm operated from the mid-1920s-mid-1990s. Today, a portion of the site is under construction for a new Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, while another portion of the site, which contains the remains of some Prison Farm buildings, resides on what the City of Atlanta is proposing as parkland.
Atlanta History Center prepared this report to assist the Visioning, Memorializing, and Repurposing the former Atlanta Prison Farm Site subcommittee of the South River Forest and Public Safety Training Center Community Task Force. Sources consulted for this report include City of Atlanta records, which include City Council minutes, ordinances, committee/department annual reports, payroll records, letters, and other official correspondence; along with newspapers, web-based resources, including reports by other organizations, and books. Primary sources have been consulted wherever possible due to the nature of research of the site up until this time, which has often included misconceptions or errors. This report is intended to be a general overview of the history of the land that became the Atlanta Prison Farm and is not comprehensive; further research may be conducted about any portion of the site’s history.
This report was prepared for the Visioning, Memorializing, and Repurposing the former Atlanta Prison Farm Site subcommittee of the South River Forest and Public Safety Training Center Community Task Force.
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