Mansions on wooded lots on one side of Peachtree Road, glass office towers on the other.
What Buckhead looks like
West of Peachtree Road, brick and stone mansions sit on wooded lots behind long driveways and iron gates. Along the road and around , the buildings turn into glass office and hotel towers, more than fifty of them. The tallest is the 660 foot Sovereign. , a curved glass condominium, rises where Peachtree Road meets Piedmont Road.
Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza face each other across Peachtree Road, their parking decks and mall entrances lining the boulevard. A few blocks north, the 's cream terra cotta facade rises two storeys over a marquee, arched bays and a stepped parapet from 1930. MARTA's Lenox station and a second stop sit along the same stretch of Peachtree Road.
On the residential side, Garden Hills keeps its brick elementary school behind a columned portico, with a tiered brick amphitheater on the hill behind it. , a diner in a strip of storefronts on Peachtree Road, has a sign reading Serving Buckhead Since 1948.
is a Palladian style mansion with a columned portico and a boxwood garden behind it. It played President Snow's residence in Catching Fire, the second Hunger Games film, with the Morning Room redressed as his office and new sets built on the lawn and gardens. The production returned to the same house for the sequel, Mockingjay, Part 2. The garden was used again in 2023 for a fencing scene in The Rise of Red, the fourth Descendants movie. A second mansion nearby, the on Pinestream Road, played Ella's house in the same film.
Shot in Buckhead
Swan House played President Snow's residence in two Hunger Games films, its garden used again for a fencing scene in the fourth Descendants movie. The Calhoun Estate, a separate Buckhead mansion, played Ella's house in the same film.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, 2013
Swan House
Played President Snow's mansion, the Capitol, Panem, the future
Location scouts chose Swan House because its classical style and original antiques looked, in their words, like it had been there forever. The production spent about three weeks on the property, with five days of actual filming, redressing the Morning Room as President Snow's office and building new sets on the front lawn and in the gardens for the Capitol's victory party scene.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2, 2015
Played President Snow's mansion, the Capitol, Panem, the future
The production returned to Swan House for the sequel, this time redressing the Morning Room as a Presidential Palace guest bedroom rather than Snow's office. The mansion's Boxwood Porch stood in for a breakfast scene and its Boxwood Garden for the Victory Tour buffet dinner.
Descendants: The Rise of Red, 2024
Played the palace garden, Auradon
In 2023 the garden behind Swan House was used for a fencing practice scene between the character Chloe and her father. The same production also used a second Buckhead mansion for a separate credit.
The Buckhead Theatre opened in June 1930, its cream terra cotta facade cast in Spanish Baroque style with arched bays and a stepped parapet. Santa Barbara's State Street was rebuilt in the Spanish Colonial Revival style after the 1925 earthquake, under an ordinance mandating the style. The Arlington Theatre opened there in May 1931, a year after the Buckhead. Its own facade is stucco under a red tile roof, with the same large arches at its street entrance. The marquee now advertises concerts rather than films. The ground floor storefronts have changed since 1930, so a period shot needs to hold on the upper facade and its ornament rather than street level. Try searching arched Spanish revival facade now.
Post Oak Boulevard in Houston, Texas
Buckhead's office and hotel towers grew up along Peachtree Road around Lenox Square, an enclosed mall from 1959. Houston's Post Oak Boulevard grew up the same way around the Galleria, a mall from 1970, with Philip Johnson's three Post Oak Central towers rising between 1975 and 1982 and the taller Williams Tower following in 1983. Both districts remain a boulevard of glass office and hotel towers between a mall and a residential neighborhood. 10 Terminus Place, the tower this page photographs, is a curved glass condominium from 2008. Post Oak Boulevard's own towers are boxier and mostly earlier, built from the 1970s and early 1980s, so the comparison works at the level of the district rather than matching one building to another. Try searching glass office towers boulevard now.
