Hawkins Lab’s real location wasn’t built for Stranger Things at all. Long before Netflix ever needed a building menacing enough to house Dr. Brenner’s experiments, the structure had already spent three decades as an actual psychiatric hospital — one connected, by pure coincidence, to a government-linked medical researcher who conducted real experiments on children just one year before the facility opened its doors.
Table of Contents
- What Hawkins Lab’s real location actually is
- The Coca-Cola fortune behind the property
- The unsettling coincidence in the site’s medical history
- Why the real Hawkins Lab is being demolished
- Frequently asked questions about Hawkins Lab’s real location
What Hawkins Lab’s real location actually is
Hawkins Lab’s real location is Building A on Emory University’s Briarcliff Campus, located at 1256 Briarcliff Road NE in Atlanta, Georgia. According to Emory’s own news office, the structure was erected in the 1960s in the brutalist architectural style — heavy on concrete, steel, and imposing geometric lines — giving it exactly the cold, institutional menace the Duffer Brothers needed for the fictional government facility where Eleven is raised and experimented on.
Emory’s coverage notes the building’s interior layout made it especially useful for filming: its varied internal spaces allowed production crews to shoot multiple scenes just steps apart that would appear on screen as entirely separate locations. Hawkins Lab isn’t the only production to take advantage of that flexibility — the same Briarcliff Campus has doubled as a 1960s-era NASA facility for Hidden Figures and First Man, a modern mental institution for Ozark, and an autopsy theater for Marvel’s WandaVision.
The Coca-Cola fortune behind the property
Hawkins Lab’s real location sits on land with a genuinely unusual origin story. According to Wikipedia, the property was originally the Briarcliff estate, built in 1922 by Asa Griggs “Buddie” Candler Jr., son of Coca-Cola founder Asa Griggs Candler. Architecture Paper’s reporting describes the younger Candler as a colorful figure known for his love of magic and unconventional pets, and the 42-acre estate he built included greenhouses, tennis courts, a private zoo building, and a community swimming pool.
The Candler family sold the property to the U.S. General Services Administration in 1948, according to Wikipedia, after which the estate briefly housed Georgia’s first alcohol treatment facility, the Georgian Clinic, starting in 1953. That chapter of the property’s history ended when it was converted into a full psychiatric institution just over a decade later — the phase of its life that would eventually make it recognizable to millions of Stranger Things viewers.
“A real-life Gatsby,” one account of the property’s history called Buddie Candler, describing the eccentric lifestyle that first defined the estate decades before it became Hawkins Lab.
The unsettling coincidence in the site’s medical history
Hawkins Lab’s real location carries a detail that reads almost too fittingly for a show built around a secret government mind-control program. According to a dedicated research site tracking the building’s history, the Georgia Mental Health Institute opened in 1965 as a joint project between Emory University and the state of Georgia — and just one year earlier, in 1964, Emory’s own Chair of Pharmacology, Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, had concluded a series of documented MKUltra-linked experiments conducted on minors.
That timeline is coincidental rather than directly connected to the institute itself, but it sits uneasily alongside the facility’s later documented history: the same research source cites the J.L. v. Parham lawsuit, which found that 46 children had been improperly institutionalized at the site during its operational years. To Die For Images notes the hospital was dedicated on November 18, 1965, with Emory doctors providing patient care and Emory medical students receiving clinical training there throughout its more than three decades of operation, treating patients until its eventual closure in 1997 amid rising operational costs.
Why the real Hawkins Lab is being demolished
Hawkins Lab’s real location won’t remain standing much longer. According to Wikipedia, Emory University leased the Briarcliff property in 2022 to private developer Galerie Living under a 99-year agreement, with plans to demolish all former hospital buildings on the site to make way for a new development. Architecture Paper’s reporting from that same year specified those plans include razing the five-story Georgia Mental Health Institute structure — known simply as “Building A” — to build Corso Druid Hills, a 500-unit senior living community.
Wikipedia’s entry notes the demolition was actively underway as of May 2026 and progressing quickly by June 2026, meaning the building that once stood in for one of television’s most recognizable fictional laboratories is now disappearing for good. The site’s abandoned years weren’t without incident either — the same research source documented that a 19-year-old died while exploring the vacant property in December 2025, a somber reminder that the crumbling, atmospheric qualities that made the building so useful for horror and thriller productions also made it genuinely dangerous once left empty and unsecured.
For more on the fictional experiments that made this building so recognizable in the first place, Read more: The Hawkins Lab Experiments covers the real MKUltra program that inspired Dr. Brenner’s research. And for the character whose entire origin story is tied to this location, Read more: Eleven’s Origin and Powers breaks down her journey from lab subject to Hawkins hero.
Emory News’s full feature on the Briarcliff Campus’s film history goes deeper into the many other productions that have used the site, and it’s worth reading in full here.
Frequently asked questions about Hawkins Lab’s real location
Where was Hawkins Lab actually filmed for Stranger Things? Hawkins Lab’s real location is Building A on Emory University’s Briarcliff Campus in Atlanta, Georgia, a former psychiatric hospital built in the brutalist architectural style.
What was the real building used for before it became Hawkins Lab’s real location? Before serving as Hawkins Lab’s filming location, the building operated as the Georgia Mental Health Institute, a psychiatric hospital run jointly by Emory University and the state of Georgia from 1965 to 1997.
Who originally owned the land where Hawkins Lab’s real location sits? The land was originally the Briarcliff estate, built in 1922 by Asa Griggs “Buddie” Candler Jr., son of Coca-Cola founder Asa Griggs Candler.
Is Hawkins Lab’s real location still standing? No. The building is currently being demolished as part of a redevelopment project that will convert the site into a senior living community called Corso Druid Hills.
Did other movies or shows film at Hawkins Lab’s real location? Yes. The same Briarcliff Campus building has also appeared in Hidden Figures, First Man, Ozark, and WandaVision.
