The Festival of Revival: Saving Inman Park

Lyrics

[Intro]
There's a rot that sets in. A slow decay.
Then there's the blade. The clean cut.
A line on a map called I-485.
They planned to sever the heart, you see.
To erase the memory held in the wood and the brick.
But a memory, if it's loved, has teeth.

[Verse 1]
Nineteen sixty-eight.
Robert Griggs arrives. Alex Miller, too.
They saw past the peeling paint, the sagging porches on Edgewood Avenue.
Past the talk of slums and teardowns.
They heard the whispers in the gables.
The papers called them crazy. A "Hippie House Tour," they'd later say.
Griggs just shook his head. Smelled the fresh-cut pine.
Said, "We're not here to make money. We are here to save the houses."

[Chorus]
So throw the doors wide open!
April, seventy-two!
Let them see the struggle, let the sunlight pour right through!
Show them the exposed lath, the plaster dust still on the floor!
This isn't a museum piece, this is a declaration of war!
This is how you save a place.
You invite the world in.

[Verse 2]
The last weekend of April.
They strung up the signs and hoped for a few hundred.
A banjo on a porch step. A tour of houses-in-progress.
And the people came. In thousands.
They walked the cracked sidewalks, looked up at the turrets.
They saw the fight in the sawdust, the hope in the stripped-down floors.
They saw a neighborhood refusing to become a ghost.

[Chorus]
So throw the doors wide open!
April, seventy-two!
Let them see the struggle, let the sunlight pour right through!
Show them the exposed lath, the plaster dust still on the floor!
This isn't a museum piece, this is a declaration of war!
This is how you save a place.
You invite the world in.

[Bridge]
The shadow of the highway began to fade.
The noise of progress was drowned out by a different sound.
A potluck picnic becoming a movement.
A home tour becoming a shield.
They weren't just showing off architecture.
They were showing the city a living, breathing heart.

[Outro]
The next year, the papers came from the National Register.
History had a new address.
It wasn't crazy after all.
It was just belief. With a hammer in its hand.