Frankie Allen Park off Pharr Road has long been associated with the Garden Hills neighborhood and Buckhead Baseball. The park has baseball diamonds, tennis courts and a long meadow dotted with large granite picnic/grilling areas.
The area now occupied by the park once was a black residential area when Buckhead was an area of farms. The Mount Olivet Methodist-Episcopal Church was located there in the early 1900s. Its cemetery remains in a corner of the park near the entrance.
Graves in the cemetery are still visited, and small wreaths and other tokens are sometimes left beside the old stones.
The park was established around 1952 as Bagley Park at 1120 Bagley Street. In 1980, it was renamed Frankie Allen Park in honor of a popular baseball umpire who had died the year before.
"Frankie Allen had become an Atlanta sports legend with his penchant for building character in the young . in the Buckhead Baseball program for the last 28 of his 51 seasons in sports in Atlanta and Georgia," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote at the time of the renaming ceremony.
Young players continue to benefit from his legacy in the park that bears his name
