The Tuxedo Park Story
In the time immediately after the turn of the twentieth century, the area now known as Tuxedo Park was comprised of large country estates fronting on West Paces Ferry Road—places built by business and civic leaders such as James L. Dickey, Robert Foster Maddox and John W. Grant so they and their families could get away from the heat and bustle of the growing city of Atlanta, especially in summer. But with the advent of the automobile, it became possible for more Atlantans to live further away from the city center, and in 1911, Charles Black bought a significant portion of one of the original West Paces Ferry summer estates and developed it into one of the Atlanta’s first automobile-centered suburban subdivisions. He named it “Tuxedo Park” after the famous Lorillard family’s community in New York.
Rather than following the more usual grid pattern of small identical lots, Black laid out his initial subdivision with large lots on curvilinear streets following the natural topography of the land, and he specifically designed the large lots to be significantly deeper than they were wide. As he told the Atlanta Journal when his new Tuxedo Park subdivision was announced, he did not want those buying his new lots to be tempted to build their homes close to the street. The new owners complied, retaining prominent architects to design gracious homes set well back on the deep lots and retaining landscape architects to design their deep front yards to follow the less formal, more pastoral setting of the natural beauty of the area.
After his initial success, Black continued to acquire more land from the original West Paces Ferry estate owners, and Tuxedo Park grew. In later years, other sections of land from those and other West Paces Ferry summer estates were subdivided by other developers and added to Tuxedo Park. All of the additions followed Black’s initial design of large, deep lots set on curvilinear streets following the natural topography, and the historic character of Tuxedo Park has been preserved over the decades.
In 2025 Tuxedo Park was listed in The National Register of Historic Places, recognizing its special role in the history of Atlanta. The nomination for National Register listing tells our neighborhood’s story in detail. Although the format for the nomination is dictated by the rules of the National Park Service and thus sometimes seems a bit stilted, it is nonetheless a fascinating read and fully reproduced here.