Its human scaled storefronts are book-ended by the English-American/"Flatiron" Building, the Healey Building, the Empire/C & S Building, and Prudential/W.D. Grant Building, the Muse's building.
When I began working at the Hurt Building in 1973, this is where you caught the bus, bought a suit. tennis shoes, ate at the Healey Building cafeteria, repaired your shoes, and much more. Bus's crammed themselves into Walton and Broad Streets, riders crammed the sidewalks getting on an off. Smelly, noisy, and busy, it pumped you up: "This is an important place in an important city."
Downtown hasn't been cool in a very long time. For me the decline started when they closed down and ripped up the streets to build the rail tunnels. It took forever. When the streets opened again and you could reach the storefronts, they were closed and the bus riders were in a hole in the ground instead of on the streets. Broad and Walton didn't rumble with buses in a cloud of diesel fumes. It didn't rumble with people either.
But on school days, thanks to Georgia State expanding it's campus into Farlie-Poplar, Broad Street is once again a great place to be at lunch time. It's the best food court in Atlanta.