Friendship Plaza - Cartersville, GA
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 34° 09.921 W 084° 47.743
16S E 703183 N 3782685
This one is more concrete space than green space. Both sides of Cherokee St. along the train tracks
Waymark Code: WMNMHA
Location: Georgia, United States
Date Posted: 04/04/2015
Views: 2
County of plaza: Bartow County
Location of plaza: both side is the old train depot
Actual address: # 1 Friendship Plaza, Cartersville
This plaza features the ONLY Monument to a creditor... Roadside America jokes it up and hokes it up a bit
"One of the first things people notice about Cartersville, Georgia is the number of trains that go through every day. In fact, about two per hour - 50 per day - bisect downtown. There are two bridges over the tracks and still some complain. But kids love them, and everybody jokes about them. Once, a jokester at the Convention & Visitors Bureau suggested "A Train Runs Through It," as a theme line for the City.
"Anyway, the reason for dwelling on trains is that it's very appropriate that traffic stops for them 50 times daily. That's because most of the traffic stops in front of Friendship Plaza, Cartersville's downtown park, and the plaza is named in honor of the man responsible for bringing trains here in the first place more than 150 years ago. The man was Mark Anthony Cooper.
"Now the reason it's Friendship Plaza instead of "Cooper Plaza" is that the name is taken from a unique monument Cooper commissioned which stands in the park. It's called "The Friendship Monument." Cooper commissioned the monument in 1857 to honor 38 friends who had aided him in a financial crisis, and it's believed to be the only monument in existence erected by a debtor to honor his creditors. Ironically trains are what got Cooper into financial trouble." ~ Discover Georgia
"A couple of years ago, people started talking about moving the monument back to Cartersville and the talk spread to Atlanta where Mark Cooper Pope lives. Pope wanted the monument back in Cartersville too and generously lent resources to make it possible. In 1999, in conjunction with the Cartersville Sesquicentennial Celebration, the Cartersville City council approved moving the Friendship Monument back downtown and named the square where the monument would be placed "Friendship Plaza." ~ Cartersville-Bartow County Convention & Visitors Bureau