Thanks for Your Support in 2024!
To All of Our Wonderful Supporters,
We at The Patch Works Art & History Center would like to express our sincerest gratitude for your generosity over the years. Your kind support has sustained our ongoing efforts to preserve Cabbagetown’s rich history, and it’s been quite the journey!
In 2015, Nina and I opened our first iteration of The Patch Works in a historic storefront on Carroll Street. This was our version of “testing the waters,” as we weren’t entirely sure if anyone would be interested in a history center focused specifically on a quirky little neighborhood nestled just inside the far-eastern periphery of Atlanta. Fortunately, the response was overwhelmingly positive, with many visitors expressing that our concept was long overdue.
2025 will mark our “first” 10-year anniversary because in true Cabbagetown style – à la The Cabbagetown Reunion Day Festival – we will have at least two more 10-year anniversaries! (2026 and 2028 spring immediately to mind.) So, how do we plan to celebrate?
Well, over the past couple of years, The Patch Works has been working to preserve at-risk historic structures in our neighborhood. In 2024, we assisted store owner Brad Cunard with an Invest Atlanta grant that is currently providing $50,000 towards improving the infrastructure of Little’s Food Store, Cabbagetown’s last remaining mill-era grocery store.
In 2025, we’re setting our sights on elements at The Mill, especially the gravely endangered Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills Power Plant, which, by the early 20th century, allowed The Mill to operate independently from the City of Atlanta’s power grid. During that same period, it was also the primary workplace for African-American men, who toiled inside its stifling hot and deafening walls.
Ten years may have gone by, but it feels like The Patch Works has simply scratched the surface. We have so much more to do when it comes to not only preserving Cabbagetown’s history but also establishing The Patch Works as Atlanta’s leading community-based art and history center.
Please continue to take this journey with us. In preserving history, you will also be making history.
See you in 2025!
Jacob Elsas
