At the time, Atlanta Gas Light had 426 gas lamps on the city’s streets. On July 21, 1881, the Atlanta City Council gave permission for the first electric light to be lit, but it took more than two years for the Georgia Electric Light Company to begin setting up its electric lights. By 1880 economic conditions had allowed all of the city’s lamps to be turned back on.īut several new challenges loomed on the horizon.
Like the rest of Atlanta and the South, Atlanta Gas Light recovered unevenly in the Reconstruction years following the war, alternately prospering and foundering. Sherman’s troops burned its gasworks to the ground in 1864. The company was ruined when Union general William T. In the midst of the Civil War (1861-65), the city briefly took over the company because a majority of the company’s stock was still owned by Helme and Northern investors, who were deemed “alien enemies” by a court decision. Early challenges included keeping the lamps lit and in working order, as well as determining whether Atlanta Gas Light employees or city police officers would light them each night. The popularity of gas lights quickly grew, and the company’s shareholders reaped handsome rewards. On April 6, 1855, both parties agreed to the terms, and construction of Atlanta’s first gas plant began. The city also agreed to give the company exclusive rights for fifty years to light Atlanta’s streets.
(Prior to the discovery and harnessing of natural gas, gas companies relied on factories that burned coal or boiled water to create gas.) The city, in turn, agreed to use at least fifty streetlights and pay thirty dollars a year for the gas to light the lamps. Helme made an agreement with the Atlanta City Council to construct a coal-burning gas plant, commonly known as a gasworks. Industrialist William Helme of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded Atlanta Gas Light Company after a sawmill he owned in Brunswick burned to the ground.
0 kommentar(er)
