This Day in Georgia History
February 26, 1868
Atlanta Offered Temporary State Capitol
A special meeting of the Atlanta city council voted to offer the combination Atlanta city hall-Fulton County courthouse for use as the new Georgia state capitol if the constitutional convention then meeting in Atlanta would include a provision designating Atlanta as Georgia’s new state capital city. The convention agreed, and the new Georgia constitution was subsequently ratified in a statewide election in April 1868. On July 4, 1868, the General Assembly held its first meeting in the temporary state capitol (which incidentally sat on the very site of the current state capitol). For six months, the city hall-county courthouse building served as Georgia’s state capitol. In January 1869, state officials moved into the Kimball Opera House, which served as state capitol for the following twenty years.
