John Howell Memorial Park
John Howell Memorial Park is a 2.8 acre park in the Virginia Highland neighborhood of Atlanta.
The park is built on the site of 11 houses demolished in the mid-1960s, when the Georgia Department Of Transportation proposed building Interstate 485 to connect what is now Freedom Parkway through Virginia Highland to what is now Georgia 400 at Interstate 85. The park site would have been the Virginia Avenue exit off the freeway.
I-485 was finally defeated, and The Georgia Department of Transportation began selling the properties it had acquired. In 1988, the park opened.
In 1989, the park was named after Virginia Highland resident and anti-freeway activist John Howell, who died from complications of HIV in 1988.
Features of the park, from west to east, are:
- Volleyball courts
- Cunard memorial playground, a children's playground dedicated in 2004 honoring neighborhood residents Lisa, Max, and Owen Cunard who were tragically killed in the summer of 2003 by a falling tree during a storm while driving along N. Highland Avenue
- Wrought iron sculpture of a stylized phoenix, the symbol of the City of Atlanta. In March 2000, a plaque describing the history of the Park was added.
- A circular pathway paved with commemorative bricks. Sale of the bricks has funded park maintenance.
Along Virginia Avenue are eleven granite columns, each of which bears the address of one of the homes that were demolished.