By the mid-1980s, Peachtree Center had become the core of a dedicated hotel-convention district that lay at the heart of the Downtown economy, even as the remainder of Downtown Atlanta deteriorated markedly. Yet the defining feature of Peachtree Center is its insular orientation, which allows patrons and workers to avoid interacting with the street level by traversing the area through sky bridges. Peachtree Center is notable for its uniform embodiment of the modern architectural style popular at the time. Intended to be the new downtown for Atlanta, Peachtree Center emerged as a distinct district in the early 1970s as a networked realm of convention hotels, shopping galleries, and office buildings a quarter-mile north of Five Points. Vibration monitoring stations were established in buildings along Peachtree Street to monitor the vibrations and compare to contract limits.Skywalks are a defining feature of Peachtree Center All excavation on the cavern was accomplished using drill and blast methods. The cavern was constructed using a heading and bench approach, first excavating the heading and following with the bench excavation. This gave the designer excellent information to finish the design. Station length: 900 feet.Īn exploratory tunnel was initially driven at the crown of the tunnel to provide input into rock quality. Length of longest escalator serving the station entrance across from the Atlanta Public Library is 190 feet- the longest in the southeast. This station is only one of a few tunnels in the world where the walls and the ceiling were carved from solid rock. Like deep sea divers, workers on this section of the rapid rail transit system were required to undergo 30 minutes of compression/decompression when entering or coming out of the tunnel. With this method, compressed air twice the normal atmospheric pressure was used to support the walls while permanent structures were being built. Soft ground or mixed tunneling was used where there was insufficient rock structure for underground support.
This rock provides underground support for the station. The Peachtree Center station was built by tunneling through solid gneiss, a granite like rock formed of layers of quartz and mica. MARTA's moving Atlanta, 120 feet below Peachtree Street. A poster dating to 1982 on the station platform describes how the station was built.
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The station was featured in the 1985 movie The Heavenly Kid. The Harris Street (northwest) entrance has a map of the MARTA system with proposed lines on it. The Ellis Street entrance was closed for more than two years for renovation it re-opened on August 24, 2012. The freestanding escalator at the CNN Center is longer at 205 feet (62 m).
Four escalator banks are used to access the station, with the Carnegie Way/Ellis Street (southwest) entrance having the longest escalators in the system, which MARTA claims are also the longest in the Southeast U.S. The floor is made of gray tile, the "walls" are made of solid gneiss rock, and the ceiling panels are made of steel. The station has an island platform serving two tracks. Image overlooking the station, note the gneiss walls on the outside of the tracks.