Buckhead
| Buckhead | |
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| District of Atlanta | |
Buckhead skyline, seen from the west
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 Buckhead
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| Coordinates: 33°50′22″N 84°22′48″W / 33.83942°N 84.37992°WCoordinates: 33°50′22″N 84°22′48″W / 33.83942°N 84.37992°W | |
| Elevation | 225–320 m (738–1,050 ft) |
| Population (2010) | |
| • Total | 78,676 |
| City of Atlanta-Office of Planning; see Demographics of Atlanta | |
| Time zone | EST (UTC-5) |
| • Summer (DST) | EDT (UTC-4) |
| Zip code | 30305, 30324, 30326, 30327, 30342 |
Buckhead is an affluent district of Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, comprising approximately the northern fifth of the city. Buckhead is a major commercial and financial center of the Southeast, and it is the third-largest business district in Atlanta, behind Downtown and Midtown. The district's highrise office buildings, hotels, and condominiums form a highly urbanized core along Peachtree Road. Surrounding this dense core are Buckhead's residential neighborhoods, which feature large single-family homes situated among dense forests and rolling hills.
In 1838, Henry Irby purchased 202 1/2 acres surrounding the present intersection of Peachtree, Roswell, and West Paces Ferry roads from Daniel Johnson for $650. Irby subsequently established a general store and tavern at the northwest corner of the intersection. The name "Buckhead" comes from a story that Irby killed a large buck deer and placed the head in a prominent location. Prior to this, the settlement was called Irbyville. By the late 1800s, Buckhead had become a rural vacation spot for wealthy Atlantans. In the 1890s, Buckhead was rechristened Atlanta Heights but by the 1920s it was again "Buckhead".
Buckhead remained dominated by country estates until after World War I, when many of Atlanta's wealthy began building mansions among the area's rolling hills. Despite the stock market crash of 1929, lavish mansions were still constructed in Buckhead throughout the Great Depression. In 1930, Henry Aaron Alexander built one of the largest homes on Peachtree Road, a 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2) house with 33 rooms and 13 bathrooms. The community was annexed by Atlanta in 1952, following an earlier attempt by Mayor William B. Hartsfield in 1946 that was voted down by residents.
Buckhead's black neighborhoods, including Johnsontown, Piney Grove, Savagetown and Macedonia Park, were razed beginning in the 1940s. In 1956, an estate known as Joyeuse was chosen as the site for a major shopping center to be known as Lenox Square. The mall was designed by Joe Amisano, an architect who designed many of Atlanta's modernist buildings. When Lenox Square opened in 1959, it was one of the first malls in the country, and the largest shopping center in the Southeastern U.S. Office development soon followed with the construction of Tower Place in 1974.
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Wikipedia