Joel Hurt | |
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| Born | July 31, 1850 Hurtsboro, Alabama, U.S. |
| Died | 1926(1926-00-00) (aged 75–76) |
| Alma mater | University of Georgia |
| Spouse | Annie Bright Woodruff |
| Children | 6 |
| Parent(s) | Joel Hurt, Sr. Lucy Apperson Long |
Joel Hurt (1850–1926) was an American businessman. He was the president of Trust Company of Georgia, and a developer inAtlanta. He was one of the many founders of SunTrust Bank.
Hurt was born on July 31, 1850, inHurtsboro, Alabama, to Lucy Apperson Long (1822–1915) and Joel Hurt, Sr. (1813–1861). The town was originally named Hurtville for Joel Hurt, Sr. He grew up in theJoel Hurt House. After attending Auburn Methodist College in Auburn, Alabama, for one year, he then enrolled at theUniversity of Georgia in Athens, graduating in 1871 with a degree in civil engineering.
He began his career in the railroad business, surveying first in the western United States the rail bed that became theAtchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. He also surveyed a small spur off theRichmond and Danville line toAthens, Georgia.[citation needed]
In 1875, Hurt moved to Atlanta, where he organized theAtlanta Building and Loan Association, which he ran for thirty-two years. He also co-founded theTrust Company of Georgia—now part ofSuntrust—and, starting in 1895, was its president for nine years. In 1882, he organized theEast Atlanta Land Company, where he designed and developedInman Park, a residential area connected to the city center by hisAtlanta and Edgewood Street Railway Company, which opened alongEdgewood Avenue in 1886. It was Atlanta's firstelectric streetcar line, and it was the first profitable electric line in America. In 1880, he filed a patent for a thermal water valve[1] and, in 1887, another for a new style of valve cock for faucets handling water under pressure.[2]
To anchor the downtown end of his streetcar line, he built Atlanta's firstskyscraper, theEquitable Building, which in 1893 became the home of the two-year-old Trust Company. His next land deal was to beDruid Hills, for which he hired theOlmsted Brothers to design a linear park alongPonce de Leon Avenue, but he sold the enterprise toAsa Candler for half a million dollars in 1908. He also built Atlanta's first fireproof theater, theAtlanta Theater (also on Edgewood), and his masterpiece, theHurt Building (which still stands).[citation needed]
In 1908, Hurt was unrepentant in hearings which brought out the shocking abuses in the Hurt family's convict labor camps. His callous indifference to evidence that many of his workers had died of abuse, and his viciousness in asserting that convict workers could not be beaten enough, horrified even contemporary Georgians. These hearings led in large part to the banning ofconvict leasing inGeorgia.[citation needed]
Hurt married Annie Bright Woodruff, and they had six children. He died in 1926.
In 1940, land was donated to the city by the Trust Company and a park was dedicated asHurt Park which lies across Peachtree Center Ave. from the Hurt Building. TheJoel Hurt Cottage[3] still stands near Elizabeth and Euclid Streets in Inman Park.
Wall Street Journal bureau chiefDouglas Blackmon's 2009Pulitzer Prize-winning book,Slavery by Another Name, revealed the extent to which Joel Hurt's fortune was built upon the profitable and exploitative use of harshly-disciplined and cruelly-deprivedconvict labor.
| Preceded by Robert Lowry | President of Trust Company of Georgia 1895 – 1904 | Succeeded by |
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