The new centennial history installation at Ponce City Market hangs on The Trestle, the third-floor passage that links the 1926 brick building to the Atlanta BeltLine's Eastside Trail. The location fits. For about 150 years, this stretch of Ponce de Leon Avenue has drawn a crowd each time someone built a new way to reach it. The installation hangs on the newest of those connections.
Jamestown, the Atlanta-based company that owns and manages the property, calls the anniversary program Ponce 100. It opened the installation on Saturday, Sept. 26, with photographs, illustrations and historical notes. The panels follow the ground from a natural spring to a theme park and a baseball field, then to the Sears building, Atlanta City Hall and the market that operates there today. Some portions will stay up after the celebration ends. If you walk this building every week, the panels describe the ground under the route you already take.
A Spring at the End of the Line
The first draw was water. In the late 1860s, Atlanta physician Henry L. Wilson named Ponce de Leon Springs and claimed the water had rejuvenating properties. The springs stayed a modest outing until 1874, when the Atlanta Street Railroad extended its Peachtree line to them. After that, visitors could ride a horse-drawn trolley out for a ten-cent fare.
That trolley extension is where the site's pattern starts. The springs had been there all along, and the crowds came once a cheap ride connected them to the city.
In 1903, developers turned the springs and gardens into the Ponce de Leon amusement park, nicknamed "The Coney Island of Atlanta." It had a casino and theater, a carousel, a Ferris wheel, a miniature railway and other rides. The ground under today's food stalls and offices was a leisure destination for decades before anyone sold a catalog item there.
The Ballpark Across the Street
The second crowd came for baseball. Ponce de Leon Park opened May 23, 1907, on a filled-in lake across from the amusement park, and it became home to the Atlanta Crackers. It also hosted the Atlanta Black Crackers from 1919 to 1952, during the era of segregated baseball.
The Atlanta History Center fills in the details. Fire destroyed the wooden stands on Sept. 7, 1923. The rebuilt park opened for the 1924 season with 14,000 seats and a magnolia growing in the outfield, 462 feet from home plate. On April 8, 1949, a series between the Crackers and the Brooklyn Dodgers, with Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella on the field, became Atlanta's first integrated professional baseball game. The Crackers left in 1965, and the ballpark was torn down in 1966.
The ballpark is the one chapter you can still connect to something growing across the street. In 2016, a New Georgia Encyclopedia editor wrote about a magnolia near 650 Ponce de Leon Place NE. In a Saporta Report column, the editor said it was likely planted after the lake was filled and estimated it at 90 to 100 years old at the time. After the installation on The Trestle, that tree is the most direct physical link to the ballpark era within a short walk of the building.
Sears Built Its Own Connections
When Sears, Roebuck and Co. opened its Atlanta facility on Aug. 2, 1926, about 30,000 shoppers came through the doors. The building covered four acres and two million square feet, which made it the largest brick building in the South. It was one of nine regional distribution centers Sears built between 1910 and 1929.
The pattern held. To support the operation, the city extended North Avenue, a railroad spur was added for shipping, and the North Avenue Street Car ran between the property and Peachtree Street. A retail giant needed road, rail and streetcar links, and it got all three.
The building also drew people for more than shopping. A 2026 local history series lists several sides of the Sears years:
- A farmers' market ran at the back of the property from 1930 to 1947 and drew as many as 3,000 people at its peak, with Georgia producers selling from space Sears provided.
- An animal department in the 1940s sold and shipped live baby chicks, monkeys and baby alligators from the building.
- Kit houses sold through the catalog in the 1930s included a model called "The Atlanta," priced at $4,447, which buyers assembled themselves.
- A staff of up to 1,000 worked there by midcentury, and the cafeteria served 1,800 meals a day.
The farmers' market detail is a useful one to know. Ponce City Market's food halls and makers' markets have predecessors on this exact property that go back almost a century.
Connections Built for Each Era
The installation tells the story as a sequence of uses. The access routes run underneath that story, and the sources line up like this:
| Era | What drew people | How they got there |
|---|---|---|
| Late 1860s to 1903 | Ponce de Leon Springs | Peachtree trolley line, extended in 1874, ten-cent fare |
| 1903 onward | Amusement park, then a ballpark from 1907 | The same streetcar corridor along Ponce |
| 1926 onward | Sears store, warehouse and farmers' market | Extended North Avenue, a rail spur, the North Avenue Street Car |
| 2014 to 2015 onward | Ponce City Market | Eastside Trail access by way of The Trestle |
The Quiet Decades
The building went quiet when the connections stopped serving it, and the sources disagree on the exact dates. A.T.L. News says Sears closed its Atlanta retail store in 1979 and ended regional office operations in 1987. Ponce City Market's own history page says the showrooms closed in 1989. The likeliest explanation is that the retail floor, the offices and the warehouse shut down at different times, so each date can be right about a different part of the building.
The city's purchase has the same problem. A.T.L. News and Southern Spaces put the sale in 1990, and the market's timeline dates the City of Atlanta's purchase and conversion to City Hall East to 1991. Either way, the building spent the 1990s and 2000s as municipal space, not as a destination for the public.
It wasn't empty, though. From 1993 to 2006, the building housed Lee Haney's World Class Fitness Center, a 20,000-square-foot gym run by the eight-time Mr. Olympia. His old gym floor is now a stationery shop. Walking the corridors years later, Haney said, "I knew there was a lot of possibility in this building… I love what they've done."
Jamestown's redevelopment came in stages. A purchase deal was struck in 2010, the first tenant arrived in 2012 and the first wave of openings followed in 2014. In 2015, the Central Food Hall, the shops and BeltLine access all opened. BeltLine access was part of that final phase, so the building's latest revival opened alongside a new connection to the city, just as the springs, the ballpark and the Sears store had.
Two Weeks Left for the Photographs
The Trestle installation is staying, at least in part. The archival photography exhibition is not. Photographer Blake Burton and historian Jerry Hancock put together a visual history of how the building was preserved, both its architecture and its spirit. It hangs on the second floor of the Central Food Hall, next to Glad & Young, and runs through Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. As of today, that leaves two weeks.
If the panels spark your interest, the pair's book is Ponce City Market: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Atlanta's Largest Building, published by Schiffer. It combines Burton's photography with an illustrated essay by Hancock.
A walk between the two takes a few minutes. Start at the food hall photographs, take the stairs to The Trestle and finish where the building meets the Eastside Trail.
This Fall at the Market
The centennial has left a few things worth timing a visit around:
- "100 Years on Ponce" ale. Three Taverns' Ponce Brew Terminal, the brewery's outpost on the Eastside Trail at 680 North Ave., released this classic pre-Prohibition-style ale for the anniversary. Das BBQ handles the food.
- Blooms Market at Ponce. The monthly second-Saturday makers' and food-vendor market at The Shed is on Oct. 10 from 4 to 9 p.m.
- The Wednesday Session: Live Jazz. Ponce Brew Terminal hosts weekly jazz from 7 to 10 p.m., and the market calendar lists sessions on Nov. 4 and Dec. 2.
- New food hall stalls. NoriFish and Okiboru opened in the food hall on Friday, Aug. 28.
The farmers' market that drew 3,000 people to the back of the Sears property ended in 1947. Blooms Market now sets up at The Shed on the same property every second Saturday.
Easy access has shaped this corner of Intown Atlanta since the trolley reached the springs, and it still shapes how close-in homes are valued. If you live near Ponce and want to know how your home's location reads to today's buyers, Ken Covers can walk you through it. Get your instant home valuation and consultation.
