Head to Athens on a weekday between September and May, and students will likely be flowing down Baxter Street from high-rise dormitories at the top of the hill toward the University of Georgia campus. Young people have lived in each of the three nine- or 10-story towers on the hill — Creswell Hall, Brumby Hall and Russell Hall — for decades. When Hattie Thomas Whitehead was young, she lived here, too. “When I was a little girl, this was dirt,” Thomas Whitehead said while giving a tour of her old neighborhood recently, referring to Finley Street, which runs between Creswell and Russell. “It was not paved.”