Photos Document Five-Year Transformation of Ponce City Market

Audio interview

  Blake Burton took these photographs of the crumbling old City Hall East building during its five-year transformation into Ponce City Market, the bright and shiny Midtown development viewed by many in Atlanta and beyond as a standard-bearer of a construction that successfully merged the ideals of preservation and sleek design.

When Burton first started snapping these photos, he was fresh out of architecture school and overseeing the cleanup of City Hall East as Atlanta prepared to sell it to developer Jamestown Properties.

In this interview, Burton tells WABE what it was like to have free rein of this 2,000,000-plus square feet of Atlanta history as he documented its transformation. He is working on a book showcasing his work.