Wisconsin veterans of the Battle of Atlanta commissioned a giant painting of the battle in 1885, which they intended to exhibit for profit. Three German painters supervised a staff of fifteen German and Polish artists. They produced a cyclorama that weighed 18,000 pounds, was fifty feet high and 600 feet in circumference. For ten years it traveled with a circus which G. V. Kress of Atlanta, Georgia, purchased in the late 1890s for $2,000. He gave the painting to the City of Atlanta in 1898, along with animals which became the nucleus of the City's zoo collection.

The Cyclorama first hung in an open shed; in 1921 it was placed in the present closed structure and in 1934 the Works Progress Administration added a diorama. Gustav Berger supervised a restoration of the Atlanta Cyclorama building, painting, and diorama which began in 1978 under the auspices of the Historical Conservation Project, Inc. Additional historical information about the Atlanta Cyclorama has not been determined.