The T.K. Peters House (circa 1945)

5343 Roberts Drive, Dunwoody, GA

This home was built on ten acres of land purchased by Dr. T.K. Peters in 1945. An interesting story about Peters involved the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Having just returned from a tour of China, where he had shot 55,000 feet of film, he was staying in a hotel in San Francisco. When the earthquake struck, he fanatically began to film it. Ironically, he was there to negotiate the sale of his China footage to a California film studio but lost all of it in the fire following the quake.

Peters worked on movies making sets including the very famous “parting of the Red Sea” scene in the first filmed version of The Ten Commandments. In 1935, Peters was asked to join a project at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta to archive the history of the world. Peters joined Dr. Thornwell Jacobs in creating the Crypt of Civilization and worked on the project filming books and other reading material for three years. Finally, in 1940, the crypt was closed and was to remain so for the next 6,000 years.

This home, made of cinder-block and brick, was built on Wild Cat Creek. In July of 1864, Union soldiers marched south towards Atlanta and Decatur on what is now Roberts Drive and Chamblee Dunwoody Road, directly in front of today’s Dunwoody Nature Center. A story passed down in Dunwoody tells of a few Confederate soldiers firing on the Federal soldiers as they passed; however, Civil War historians do not corroborate this story. However, there are three gun emplacements located just below the house.

In honor of the mill that originally stood on the property, Peters mounted a six foot diameter millstone from that mill on the front of the home. He and his wife, Grace, lived on the land in Dunwoody until 1961, when they sold the home and six of the ten acres and moved to California.

In 1975, DeKalb County purchased the home and property to serve as an arts center. After several years, the arts center required more space, so it was moved to the North DeKalb Cultural Arts Center. For the three years following the move, vandals destroyed property on the site, and the community stopped using walking trails due to safety concerns. In 1990, a community group got together to create the Dunwoody Nature Center on the site where it thrives today.

The building is currently used as office and classroom space for the Dunwoody Nature Center.