About Buckhead Forest

The neighborhood

Buckhead Forest sits in a quiet pocket of the triangle formed by Peachtree, Piedmont, and Roswell roads: about 36 acres of rolling hills, curving streets, and homes set well back on generous lots. That park-like layout was the plan from the beginning, and more than a century later it still defines the place.

The neighborhood grew in stages. After the Georgia Railway and Electric Company ran its trolley line up Peachtree Road to Buckhead in 1907, four separate subdivisions were laid out here between 1911 and 1945. The earliest streets were built for streetcar commuters, and the later ones were shaped by the arrival of the automobile.

A walk through the decades

You can read that history in the houses. Early bungalows and English Cottages give way to American Small Houses and ranches, with touches of Craftsman, Colonial Revival, English and French Vernacular Revival, and mid-century Contemporary design. At least one home on West Shadowlawn Avenue traces back to a plan book by Leila Ross Wilburn, one of the South’s first women to open her own architecture practice. Many renovations over the years have happened at the backs of homes, which is a big part of why the streetscape still looks the way it does.

In 2015, the neighborhood was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Alberta Drive-Mathieson Drive-West Shadowlawn Avenue Historic District. Most of us just call it Buckhead Forest.

Historical details courtesy of Buckhead Heritage and the Georgia Historic Preservation Division.