Web Design in Atlanta, IL

Web Design Services in Atlanta, Illinois

AppWT Web & AI Solutions has been providing exceptional web design and digital marketing services to Atlanta businesses since 1997. Located in Logan County, Atlanta is home to approximately 0 residents and a thriving business community.

About Atlanta, Illinois

Atlanta, formerly named Xenia, is a city in Logan County, Illinois, sitting directly on historic Route 66 between Lincoln and McLean. The 2020 census recorded 1,669 people in 846 households across a total area of 1.26 square miles, of which 1.25 square miles is land and 0.01 square miles is water, at an elevation of about 719 feet. The city's official motto is 'Welcoming the world with a smile'. Atlanta carries an unusually dense concentration of National Register listings for a town its size, including a restored wooden grain elevator, an octagonal library and an Italianate commercial block housing a Route 66 cafe.

History of Atlanta

• Surveyors platted a community called New Castle on the site of present-day Atlanta in December 1836, and the New Castle post office opened on November 26, 1847. In May 1853 surveyors platted the separate town of Xenia, named for Xenia, Ohio, the former home of an early settler's wife, on ground crossed by the newly built main line of the Chicago and Alton Railroad. Bypassed by that rail line, New Castle residents voted to incorporate into Xenia. The post office application failed because Clay County, Illinois, already had a Xenia. Settlers next proposed Hamilton, after Colonel L. D. Hamilton, but Hancock County already had a Hamilton. The name Atlanta was finally agreed on, taken from Atlanta, Georgia, and approved because no other Illinois town used it. On October 20, 1853, the post office was renamed to the misspelled 'Atalanta', an error not corrected to 'Atlanta' until March 4, 1861. The Illinois General Assembly incorporated the community on February 14, 1855. The Peoria, Atlanta and Decatur Railroad was first surveyed in 1869, work began the following year, and the line was completed by November 1874.

Landmarks and Places in Atlanta

• The J. H. Hawes Elevator on 2nd Street, built in 1903 by McIntyre and Wykle, is a studded grain elevator that uses vertical wooden studs in its walls to form the internal grain bins; restored to original condition and now a museum, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 17, 1991, and is the only restored wooden grain elevator on the National Register in Illinois. The Atlanta Public Library, at Race and Arch Streets, was built in 1908 to a design by architect Paul A. Moratz combining Neoclassical detail with an octagonal plan; its eight sides are symmetrical except the front, broken by a classical portico with Doric columns and a round arched entrance under a red tile roof. Atlanta's library program began in 1873, and the 1908 building was funded by community support rather than a Carnegie Foundation grant, unlike most communities of the period; a clock tower was added in the 1970s and the library has operated continuously since opening. It joined the National Register on December 11, 1979. The Downey Building at 110-112 Southwest Arch Street, an Italianate structure built in 1867 by local businessman Alexander Downey, holds two storefronts and joined the National Register on February 25, 2004; its south side now houses an annex of the Atlanta Museum. A 19-foot Muffler Man giant holding a hot dog, formerly a Paul Bunyan figure, stands in downtown Atlanta.

The Atlanta Economy

• Atlanta's early commerce was organized around rail and grain. The J. H. Hawes Elevator was built in 1903 along the Illinois Midland Railroad to store locally farmed grain before the railroad shipped it to Peoria, Decatur and Terre Haute, Indiana, and it operated until 1975. The Exchange National Bank of Atlanta occupied the south storefront of the Downey Building shortly after that building opened in 1867, and was at the time the only bank in Atlanta, having been chartered the previous year after the previous bank shut down; it later traded as the First National Bank of Atlanta and the Atlanta National Bank before relocating in 1916. The Palms Grill Cafe opened in the building's north storefront in 1934, serving both residents and Route 66 travelers and doubling as Atlanta's Greyhound Bus stop; it closed during the 1960s and reopened in 2009 after extensive renovation. Route 66 tourism is the visible modern draw. No employment or industry statistics are published in the sources consulted.

Community Life in Atlanta

• The Atlanta Argus was established in May 1869 by Albion Smith and was the second newspaper printed in Logan County; it ran alone until 1964, when it merged with The Armington Helper of Armington in Tazewell County, and the combined Atlanta Argus and The Armington Helper ran until 1983. The town is home to radio station WLCN, which broadcasts a country music format. Atlanta Public Schools are part of Olympia Community Unit School District 16 and students attend Olympia High School; the town lies within the community college district of Heartland Community College in Normal. Natives include sportswriter Dave Kindred, born in Atlanta on April 12, 1941, who played basketball for Atlanta High School and led the team to the 1959 regional championship; composer and music educator Eleanor Sophia Smith, born in Atlanta in 1858, a founder of Chicago's Hull House Music School who headed its music department from 1893 to 1936; and organist and choral conductor Paul Callaway, born in Atlanta in 1909, who spent thirty-eight years at Washington National Cathedral between 1939 and 1977. Lester C. Hunt, later governor of Wyoming and a United States senator, was born in Isabel, Illinois, but was raised in Atlanta and graduated from Atlanta's high school in 1912.

Local reference: en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org