Midtown: The Civic Corridor

Lyrics

I remember you.October, 1974.The air on Peachtree was wet concrete and diesel.Fifty-eight degrees at a quarter past eight.Before the name settled in your bones.You were just a pass-through.A Tight Squeeze between the railroad cuts.Rooming houses with forgotten names on the lease.A place to get from Downtown, on your way to Buckhead.A skid row of ghosts nobody wrote down.Just a ridge, waiting.I will call you Midtown.Not for a general, not for a king.Not for a battle won or lost.Just for the place you hold.The civic corridor, the spine between.I'll give you your name: Midtown.Then the Alliance came with blueprints and a vision.Drew straight lines over the tight squeeze.Said here, a stage. Here, a gallery.Here, a home for the symphony.A deliberate heart, planned for the long haul.A civic artery, pumping life north and south.And we will call you Midtown.Not for a family, not for a saint.Not for a monument to the past.Just for the place you hold.The cultural corridor, the spine between.This is your name: Midtown.But I still hear the tenants, packing their bags in 1975.Their names aren't on the bronze plaques.Their stories are in the mortar between the new bricks.A city builds on what it clears away.I'll hold their silence for you, too.It's part of the name.From this wet concrete, from this October morning...I see the glass towers rise.I see the lights on the Fox marquee.I see the white walls of the High museum.The corridor stretches out, breathing.Midtown.