November 11, 1914
A meeting that would have a big and far-reaching impact on transportation throughout the United States occurred during the Fourth American Road Congress, which had commenced a couple of days earlier in Atlanta. As Motor Age magazine confirmed, Georgia’s capital city during that week was “a vortex of good roads enthusiasm.”
There were plenty of presentations and more than 100 exhibits for road champions from all over the country. The delegates for the Fourth American Road Congress also attended such unforgettable social events as a reception featuring ragtime music and a dinner offering up possum as the main course. By noon on November 12, the registration committee had run out of badges for would-be delegates. That left the number of those officially registered at 3,370, with a total of 5,000 when counting those not registered.
This congress, which was co-sponsored by the American Highway Association and the American Automobile Association, proved to be not just popular but pivotal as well. This was due in large part to a meeting of 14 state highway officials on November 11. This Wednesday meeting was held at the Georgian Terrace Hotel, which had been around for only three years by that time, at Peachtree Street and Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta. (The hotel can be seen on the left side of the vintage postcard accompanying this post.) During their meet-up at the hotel, these state highway officials collectively if informally agreed on the need to form an association to advocate for the funding and building of better roads nationwide.
The Atlanta Constitution characterized this meeting and the agreement that resulted from it as one of “the most important events of the fourth American Road Congress,” and the meeting ultimately lived up to this early assessment by helping to pave the way for the organization that was known as the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) until 1973 and is now called the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). The meeting also set the stage for a federal-state partnership that remains in place more than a century later.
Logan Waller Page (1870-1918), director of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads (a predecessor to today’s U.S. Department of Transportation) and outgoing president of the American Highway Association, took time on the night after that that gathering at the Georgian Terrace Hotel to underscore the meeting’s significance. While speaking at the annual meeting of the American Highway Association on that Thursday night in Atlanta, Page specifically noted “the formation of an organization of State highway officials.”
The obvious excitement shown by Page in proclaiming “the formation” of an association of state highway officials was understandable, but it also caused him to make an announcement that was premature in several key respects. As confirmed by the Atlanta Constitution at the time, no name for the new organization was chosen nor were any officers elected. All of this, and more, would not be accomplished until those state highway officials and others convened for an official meeting the following month at the Raleigh Hotel in Washington, D.C.
All of these decades later, the Beaux-Arts style Georgian Terrace Hotel remains standing in what is now Atlanta’s Fox Theatre Historic District. Along with being the location for a major milestone in AASHTO’s history, this luxury hotel has hosted several other notable luminaries. Those who have stayed there include Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968), Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), Walt Disney (1901-1966), and F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940).
Image Credit: Public Domain
Additional information on the origins of AASHTO is available at Better Roads and Streets – Google Books
Transportation History 
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