Brookhaven, GA

Brookhaven’s compact footprint contains several distinct versions of metropolitan Atlanta. Peachtree Road and Dresden Drive form the traditional civic and commercial center, joined directly to the regional rail network at Brookhaven-Oglethorpe MARTA station. Brookhaven City Centre opened beside the station in August 2025. About 60 percent of its 58,250 square feet is public space, including an event hall, meeting rooms, outdoor venues, a coffee shop, and a visitor store. City offices and public rooms now occupy the same intersection as the rail station and the older Peachtree-Dresden business district. Its inaugural art installation includes two long-term loans from Oglethorpe’s museum. South and east, Buford Highway combines multifamily housing with an immigrant-gateway business corridor known for international shops and restaurants. North of the older center, offices and medical campuses merge into the Perimeter business district near Interstate 285.

ATTRAtlanta Constitution pre-1923 / Public domain

These corridors give daily errands, work, and public gatherings different addresses within a city of roughly 12 square miles. Brookhaven has incorporated twice under two different names. Muscogee Creek communities lived in the area before forced removal. John Evins became its first permanent European settler around 1810, and the Goodwin family established a plantation in the 1830s; their surviving house remains near Peachtree Road. North Atlanta incorporated here as a village in 1924 and was abolished in 1965. Nearly half a century later, voters approved a Brookhaven charter on July 31, 2012, and city operations began that December. The revived municipality now governs established neighborhoods and corridors that had developed for decades before the 2012 charter.

ATTRKeizers / CC BY-SA 3.0

Healthcare and communications are especially visible in Brookhaven’s employment base. City financial records for 2024 list Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta as the largest employer, followed by AT&T Services; the same northern area includes Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital and other medical offices. Oglethorpe University adds a much older institution along Peachtree Road. Founded in 1835, the liberal-arts university occupies a collegiate Gothic campus and operates Conant Performing Arts Center and the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art. Hospital and corporate campuses cluster near the Perimeter; university buildings and mixed-use blocks line Peachtree; independently owned international businesses face Buford Highway. Trails, festivals, and museums follow those same corridors. The first 1.3-mile section of Peachtree Creek Greenway opened along the North Fork of Peachtree Creek in 2019.

ATTRBaxterguy ( talk ) / Public domain

By July 2026, later sections were still unbuilt, and a new agreement had advanced plans for a bridge over Interstate 85 to Emory’s Executive Park healthcare and employment district. Blackburn Park hosts the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, including music, an artists market, food, and a car show, while the Brookhaven International Festival returns in October with programming tied to the city’s many cultures. Oglethorpe’s art museum supplies a year-round counterpart to those large events. It presents three major exhibitions and several smaller shows annually, supplements them with lectures, concerts, and films, and holds over 1,000 objects. Its three galleries occupy the third floor of the campus’s Lowry Hall.