Second Empire and Queen Anne mansions with deep porches and turrets line wide streets, including the house that played Sugarbaker Designs on Designing Women.
What Quapaw Quarter looks like
Second Empire and Queen Anne mansions line Scott Street and Center Street, the widest streets in the quarter. Old oaks and magnolias shade iron and picket fences in front of deep porches, columned and railed with turned balusters. The largest houses carry corner towers and steep mansard roofs shingled in a fish scale pattern of slate.
Paint colors vary from pale blue and grey clapboard to cream stucco and red brick. A cream stucco mansion on Scott Street has concrete quoins at its corners and a mansard tower centered on the front, arched windows tucked under the eaves. Grey and pale blue wood houses nearby run two full storeys with wraparound porches and second floor balconies behind turned railings. A few still have a contractor's dumpster out front from ongoing restoration work.
The Tower Building rises in red brick over MacArthur Park a few blocks east, a mansard roof over its dormer windows and older trees around the lawn. A red brick Gothic Revival church nearby has a pointed stone arch over its stained glass window and red double doors at street level. , southwest of the park, holds rows of nineteenth century stone markers under a dense tree canopy.
Two storey brick storefronts run under fabric awnings and street trees on South Main Street, the neighborhood's commercial edge a few blocks from downtown's office towers. A row of parked cars lines the curb in front of the shopfronts.
Shot in Quapaw Quarter
's Second Empire front appears in the opening credits of the CBS sitcom Designing Women, playing the exterior of the fictional Sugarbaker Designs firm. Footage of the , a few blocks away, stood in for two Atlanta homes on the same series and for a Connecticut mansion on 30 Rock.
Designing Women, 1986-1993
Villa Marre
Played Sugarbaker Designs, Atlanta, Georgia, 1986 to 1993
Villa Marre's cream stucco front, iron fence and mansard roof of patterned slate appear in the show's opening titles. There, the mansion plays the exterior of Sugarbaker Designs, the interior design firm the four lead characters run. The production used it only in the title sequence, never as a scene shot with the cast on site.
Designing Women, 1986-1993
Arkansas Governor's Mansion
Played Suzanne Sugarbaker's home, Atlanta, Georgia, 1986 to 1993
Exterior footage of the Georgian Revival mansion, its white portico and circular drive fronted by clipped hedges, stood in for Suzanne Sugarbaker's Atlanta home in early seasons and Anthony Bouvier's home in later ones. As with Villa Marre, this is stock exterior footage cut into the series rather than a scene shot with the cast on site.
30 Rock, 2008
Played Gavin Volure's home, Connecticut, 2008
The same mansion's exterior stood in for the Connecticut home of Gavin Volure, a character played by Steve Martin, in a third season episode. The producers bought the footage from a stock image company that had labeled it only as a colonial mansion, without realizing it was the real Arkansas Governor's Mansion.
What Quapaw Quarter can double for
Atlanta in Atlanta, Georgia
Villa Marre's Second Empire front and the Governor's Mansion's Georgian Revival brick both stood in for Atlanta homes on the CBS sitcom Designing Women, which was set in that city through its entire run. Both credits are stock exterior shots rather than scenes with the cast on site, so expect the same treatment here, an establishing shot rather than a full unit day. Try searching Atlanta homes exterior shot now.
New Orleans' Garden District has the same scale of Second Empire and Queen Anne mansions behind iron fences, with wide lawns and live oak canopies overhead. Wrought iron galleries and raised basements are more elaborate there, so a wide establishing shot gives the location away, a tighter porch level frame reads closer to this quarter's plainer iron fences. Try searching iron fences oak mansion now.
Starland District in Savannah, Georgia
Savannah's Starland District has a similar run of early twentieth century houses with deep porches and corner turrets on wide, tree lined streets. Savannah's Spanish moss and denser block grid are the giveaway in a wide shot, so this quarter reads better for a tighter street level frame than for an aerial. Try searching porch turret tree lined now.
