Welcome to Kirkwood

If someone asks me to give a thirty-second tour of Kirkwood, I start with the trolley. Before the cars, before the sprawl,this neighborhood was laid out in 1899 as a streetcar suburb: bungalows on generous lots,and a main street you could ride home to. Atlanta annexed Kirkwood in 1922,but the attachment never really took the neighborhood’s identity away.,

Start with the streets

Kirkwood is on a National Register historic district, which is another way of saying the bungalows here have stories,and painted porches,and owners who argue lovingly about paint colors. Bessie Branham Park, at roughly 7 acres in the middle of the grid,is the communal anchor: tennis courts, baseball fields, a playground,and a recreation center that the whole hood treats as a second address.,

A core that actually walks

The downtown Kirkwood core along Hosea L. Williams Drive is where the neighborhood gathers: coffee at Taproom, pies at Urban Pie,a booth at Poor Hendrix,and cocktails at Elmyriachi. You can do a Saturday morning on foot,and the sidewalks actually get the traffic.,

The path ahead

Coan Park carries the Trolley Line Trail through its middle,and the Eastside Trolley Trail,a 1.1-mile protected multiuse connection now under construction,is headed straight for the Atlanta Beltline. When that link lands,Kirkwood becomes one of the easiest intown hoods to live car-light in. That is the kind of change that shifts whole streets;,and it is why people who move here tend to stay here.,