The Big Chicken
Georgia
That fifty-six-foot steel chicken towering above Marietta has been an Atlanta-area landmark since nineteen sixty-three. A restaurant owner named S. R.
Davis, known as Tubby, commissioned a Georgia Tech architecture student to design the giant bird as an advertisement for his fried chicken shop at the corner of Cobb Parkway. The building became a KFC franchise in nineteen seventy-four. Colonel Sanders himself initially wanted the structure torn down, believing customers should see his face, not a giant hen.
He changed his mind when he learned that this particular location was the highest-grossing KFC franchise in the world. The Big Chicken survived storm damage in nineteen ninety-three, was fully rebuilt, and got a two-million-dollar renovation in twenty seventeen. Today Atlanta-area residents use it as a navigation landmark, as in: turn left at the Big Chicken.
