History of the Pratt-Pullman Yard

Inside the Building Across The Street, originally uploaded by Double B Photography.

The Pratt Engineering/Pullman Company property is an historic transportation and industrial complex, dating back to the country's industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Pratt Engineering Company purchased this property adjacent to the rail line in 1900 in what was once the City of Kirkwood. The Pratt company did defense contracting work during World War I and in the 1920s the entire facility was purchased by the Pullman Passenger Rail Car Company and converted to use for everything from regular car maintenance to entire rebuilds and refitting of large locomotives. This facility served the entire southeast and until The Pullman Company lost an anti-trust case in the late 1940s, Pullman Inc. by federal court order, sold on June 30th The Pullman Co., the sleeping car division, to 59 railroads. The capitol stock of the company was now owned by these railroads. There was no further connection or affiliation with Pullman Incorporated or the Pullman-Standard Manufacturing Co. Sale price to the railroads was $40 million. Many of the industrial buildings, characterized by brick clad and riveted iron skeleton construction built by Pratt Engineering and the brick clad reinforced concrete buildings built by the Pullman Company remain on the site. Soon after the anti-trust loss, Pullman drastically scaled back operations and in 1950 sold the Atlanta yard to Georgia Power where it was used to service trackless trolleys for their mass transit operations. In 1990 the Georgia Building Authority bought the property and for a time in the mid 1990s, the state ran a supper train ride out to Stone Mountain called the New Georgia Railroad whose passenger terminal was located near the GSU campus in a small building now used by Atlanta Police Department which just happens to hold the original Atlantic & Western zero mile marker which founded Atlanta. Since the demise of the NGR the property had sat idle for some time before re-selling 1.85 acres to Georgia Power to build a power sub-station that would service the surrounding communities. They project is currently in production, they have torn down 2 buildings but will not be allowed to tear down anymore. Some of the buildings are on the Atlanta Preservation Society watch list of endangered historic structures.