The Walking Dead opened its first season with a shot from the Jackson Street Bridge, looking down Freedom Parkway toward downtown.
What Old Fourth Ward looks like
crosses on a short bridge, with downtown Atlanta's towers filling the far end of the road below. Freedom Parkway runs below street level here, a limited access road with grass verges and street trees on both sides, more like a park with traffic than a highway.
The former Sears warehouse along dates from 1926, nine floors of beefy brick masonry and steel frame windows under a neoclassical central tower. A water tower and a six acre rooftop deck with a beer garden sit above the roofline. Retail, restaurants, offices and apartments fill the building today. Hundreds of the original support columns and freight elevators are still inside it.
The Beltline's Eastside Trail runs along the neighborhood's east side on a paved path, brick mill and factory buildings converted to lofts along it. Among them are the DuPre Excelsior Mill, Studioplex and the former National NuGrape Company plant. sits just south of , seventeen acres with a pond ringed by a path and a skate park at one end.
South of Freedom Parkway, the largest concentration of single family houses in the neighborhood sits on narrower streets, a mix of wood frame houses and brick two and three family buildings. Brick apartment buildings near Boulevard date from just after 1917.
Shot in Old Fourth Ward
The AMC series The Walking Dead opened its first episode with a shot from the Jackson Street Bridge, looking out over Freedom Parkway toward downtown. Wrecked cars were added to the empty road afterward.
The Walking Dead, 2010
Rick rides into Atlanta
The horseback ride into a seemingly deserted Atlanta was shot from the Jackson Street Bridge, looking down Freedom Parkway toward the skyline. It opens the first episode, Days Gone By. The shot became the poster image for the first season. Street View
What Old Fourth Ward can double for
Crosstown Concourse in Memphis, Tennessee
Crosstown Concourse in Memphis started in 1927 as a Sears mail order warehouse and retail store, a year after the Atlanta building and built to the same brief. It sat closed from 1993 until a 2015 to 2017 renovation turned it into apartments, offices, a school and a clinic inside the original brick and concrete structure. That is the same conversion Ponce City Market went through. The finished building keeps its industrial scale and its original steel frame windows. Ponce City Market's rooftop sign and water tower are recognizable and need to stay out of a wide shot aimed at doubling for Memphis. A shot held close on the brick facade and the loading bays works for either building better than one that shows the whole block. Try searching Sears warehouse conversion now.
Charlotte's Rail Trail runs about three and a half miles through South End on a former rail corridor, past old textile mills and warehouses converted into apartments, restaurants and shops. Atherton Mill, built in 1892, sits on the trail as a market and retail building inside its original brick shell. That is the same idiom as the mills strung along the BeltLine's Eastside Trail here. Both trails run on repurposed rail beds with a paved path and a mix of converted industrial buildings and new construction along them. Charlotte's Rail Trail runs beside the LYNX Blue Line light rail, with overhead wires and a station platform the Eastside Trail does not have, so a shot that keeps the tracks out of frame holds up better. Try searching converted mill building now.
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