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Walk into Atkins Park on a Friday night and you’ll find a little bit of everything: families on the patio, young professionals gathered for happy hour, and longtime regulars swapping stories at the bar. The mix feels seamless, and it always has been.
“This has always been a place you could come by yourself and not feel alone, and then leave with people you’ll hang out with later,” says General Manager Elizabeth Howell.
That welcoming spirit has kept Atkins Park thriving for more than a century and Howell working here for over two decades. Opened in 1922, it is Atlanta’s oldest continuously licensed tavern, a title it wears with pride. But unlike many century-old establishments, Atkins Park is not resting on nostalgia. It is alive, evolving, and deeply rooted in the neighborhood it calls home.
Owner Sandra Spoon has been part of Atkins Park since 1985, joining her late husband, Warren Bruno, who purchased the tavern in 1983.
“This is my other home. It’s my family, and the rest is history,” she says, reflecting on four decades of serving the community.
That sense of home is shared by generations of guests who return again and again. “So many older people come in and say, ‘Oh my gosh, when I was at Emory in the ’80s, I used to hang out here,’ and now they’re sitting with their adult children and grandchildren. Some met here, and they’ll say, ‘We’ve been married 30 years because of this place,’” Spoon shares.
Generations have passed through the doors, yet the tavern continues to attract new faces. As Spoon notes, the energy shifts with time. “It’s cyclical, where the age group kind of changes a little bit. We’ve got young people mixed in with our longtime regulars, but those young people will grow up, and they’ll keep coming back. Then their kids come. That’s the cycle.”
Behind that legacy are the people who make Atkins Park feel like home. Spoon has worn nearly every hat: server, bartender, manager, and now owner, and still calls tending bar her favorite role. “You’re face-to-face with people, and you really get to know them. That’s how you build the relationships that make this place what it is.”
Howell echoes that sentiment. “You meet the coolest people here, and they become part of your life. It’s not just customers. It’s friends, it’s family.”
And for longtime bartender Andrew Crow, who has worked behind the bar for nearly 18 years, that family feeling defines the place. “It really is a tight-knit group,” he says. “If you’re having a bad day, you won’t get away with hiding it. People check on you, they hang out outside this place, and it carries over into their relationships with us. I’ve worked at a lot of bars, and it’s never been like this.”
Atkins Park’s identity is inseparable from its role as a gathering place. Warren Bruno understood that from the beginning. In 1984, just a year after buying the tavern, he helped launch Summerfest as a way to reconnect neighbors and celebrate the Virginia Highland community. What began as a small block party has grown into one of Atlanta’s most beloved arts and music festivals.
That community spirit continues today through traditions that bring people together. For example, every Friday at 6 p.m., the tavern rings the bell behind the bar and offers a complimentary round of shots to everyone inside and on the patio. The decades-old ritual signals the start of the weekend and often celebrates a customer’s milestone or moment worth cheering for.
“It’s become this ritual,” Howell explains. “Kids are outside doing sidewalk chalk, families are eating a meal, regulars are at the bar for happy hour, and everyone joins in the toast.”
Atkins Park also hosts annual events like fundraisers, holiday bike rides, and customer appreciation parties that keep its calendar as full as its dining room. The result is a space that feels like the heartbeat of the neighborhood.
Part of what keeps Atkins Park thriving is its ability to honor its past while continually adapting to its customers. The building itself tells that story. The side that now hosts the bar and side patio once stood alone as a one-story house. It was elevated in the 1920s and transformed into the original Atkins Park Delicatessen. The adjacent dining room, once home to a cobbler and a dry cleaner, was later joined to the tavern in the 70s, connecting the regulars’ bar to a dining space for families.
When the world shifted during COVID-19, the restaurant once again found a way to evolve. What had been the parking lot became the back patio, built to offer outdoor dining and distance. It quickly became one of the neighborhood’s favorite spots to gather for a meal or unwind after work.
The menu has grown alongside the building. What began with sandwiches, hot dogs, and cold beer expanded to favorites like chicken and dumplings, the longtime Bruno Burger, and sautéed Georgia trout. Local brews from Monday Night Brewing and SweetWater round out the offerings, reflecting the same local pride that has guided Atkins Park for more than a century.
As Virginia Highland continues to evolve, Atkins Park remains a living link between past and present, tradition and change. For Spoon, the answer to the tavern’s endurance is simple. “We just have so much history with our public. That’s what keeps us going.”
A century in, Atkins Park is more than a tavern. It’s the neighborhood’s front porch, its gathering place, its memory book, and its promise that no matter how the city grows, there will always be a familiar barstool waiting on North Highland Avenue.
