SCAD breathes life into Peters House

Photo by Ben Dashwood
(Left to right) Interior design students Vivian Baek, Jessica DeLeon, Emma McDuffie and Lisa Accetturo discuss noteworthy features of the Peters House with professor Bob Dickensheets during class May 23.

By: Beth Concepción

Published: Friday, June 1, 2007

Beneath the scaffolding, construction dust and coverings that protect important features, the Peters House on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta clearly is a treasure awaiting its new life.

The Peters House, called Ivy Hall by the Peters family, was designed by noted architect Gottfrid L. Norrman in 1883. It is Atlanta’s oldest, most complete and single most important residence from the city’s “New South,” post-Civil War period, according to Boyd Coons, executive director of the Atlanta Preservation Center. When completed, the facility — which will again be known as Ivy Hall — will serve as a cultural arts and writing center where students and community members can gather for poetry and book readings, seminars and lectures by prominent authors, as well as chamber music concerts. Ivy Hall also will house an artist in residence.

The Peters family was responsible not only for shaping midtown Atlanta but also for creating the Peters Park area, a 200-acre tract that Edward Peters eventually donated for the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Later known as The Mansion restaurant, the landmark building was donated to the Savannah College of Art and Design by the property’s most recent owners, William Swearingen of S.D.H. Investment Corp. Inc., William Dunaway and Harry Hill.

Like the building restorations completed throughout SCAD’s history in Savannah, the Peters House project has served, and will continue to serve, as a living laboratory for students. Historic preservation specialist and professor Bob Dickensheets taught a special topics course — History of Victorian Interiors — during spring quarter. The four students in the class immersed themselves in the lives of the Peters family and the furnishings they might have used at the turn of the century. The goal of the course was not only to further an appreciation of the past, but to offer recommendations for how the college should furnish the mansion once the restoration is complete.

Interior design senior Lisa Accetturo said, “It has been really beneficial for us to be able to work on a project that is not only hands-on, but will be finished at some point in time. As part of that, we have a chance to suggest certain things and write up proposals for [SCAD President Paula S. Wallace]. In the end, it will be finished and we will be able to see it and know that we worked on it.”

Each student was assigned a room to investigate. They looked at historic photos of the house, researched the time period, then went on eBay and other Web sites to find appropriate furnishings for each assigned room.

“Getting to see the process and being able to be on-site and see that there are people working and what they do to analyze the space and figure out how to bring it back to its original state has been interesting,” said interior design student Emma McDuffie. “Having this class has opened new doors as to where I’d like to go in a career. I’m more interested now in how things are restored and how to design a space that is in a period style and how to bring it back to that period.”

Though SCAD plans to “bring it back” to the grandeur it had when it was first built, there are also plans to incorporate modern, environment-friendly ideas.

“We plan to use geothermal heating and cooling,” Dickensheets said.

In keeping with the green theme of “reduce, reuse and recycle,” Dicken­sheets pointed out other parts of the restoration project.

“We will restore the windows and doors and use material from inside the structure to infill missing areas. The material from the restaurant addition was crushed and used on-site. The structure is masonry … with a slate roof that will be reused,” he said.

The rehabilitation is expected to take 18 months to two years and cost an estimated  $2.2 million.

The Price Gilbert Jr. Charitable Fund recently donated a $5,000 grant for the restoration of the Peters House. In 2006, SCAD was awarded two grants to help fund the project. The David, Helen and Marian Woodward Fund awarded SCAD $100,000, and the James M. Cox Foundation donated an additional $25,000.

Follow the restoration of the Peters House at www.artofrestoration.org.