SCAD creating cultural center in historic home
November 16, 2007
Return to Glory: The Savannah College of Art and Design in restoring the historic Peters House, Ivy Hall, on the corner of Ponce de Leon and Piedmont.
The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) is bringing to Midtown the same ingenuity that transformed downtown Savannah into its own historical campus.
The school is restoring the private home of the Edward C. Peters family, Ivy Hall, which will provide a learning environment for students.
The historic home on the corner of Ponce de Leon Avenue and Piedmont Road has been several restaurants, the most well-known being The Mansion. Ivy Hall's newest incarnation will be as SCAD's cultural arts and writing center.
"Students will come from the ultra-modern environment of SCAD to Ivy Hall to experience an academic environment in a different way," said Bob Dickensheets, Atlanta public service director and preservation specialist for special projects for SCAD.
SCAD students are participating in the rehabilitation of the home. When finished, Ivy Hall will be "very much a part of the community," open for use by local and visiting dignitaries, preservation events, poetry readings and other cultural events, said Dickensheets.
One of the South's earliest examples of Queen Anne architecture from the post-Civil War era, the house received landmark status in 1989. SCAD President Paula S. Wallace says the institution was pleased to accept the donation of the home, which will provide laboratory experience for historic preservation students and maintain an important part of Atlanta.
"Ivy Hall embodies many characteristics that are important to Atlantans: beauty, strength, industry and hospitality," said Wallace.
"You can argue that this is the most significant house associated with Atlanta," said Greg Paxton, president and CEO of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.
Several forces united to make the restoration possible. The former owner, S.D.H. Investment Corp. Inc. received a tax credit for its donation of the property, transfer development rights will allow Jolly Development Inc. to construct condominiums on the site, and SCAD will restore a historic piece of architecture and its landscaping.
"It was a three-way, win-win situation," said Bill Swearingen, a principal of S.D.H. Investment.
Midtown allows historical properties to sell potential development rights to other properties, providing simultaneously for use of a historical landmark and modern development. Through this transfer, SCAD will be able to preserve Ivy Hall and its landscaping on a roughly 3-acre site, and Jolly will construct Ivy Hall Condominiums as a backdrop to the house.
SCAD has engaged Surber Barber Choate & Hertlein Architects Inc., as well as Spencer Tunnell of Tunnell & Tunnell Landscape Architecture. Dickensheets says that the restoration should take 18 months and cost $2.2 million.
Donations have already been made by the Chrysler Foundation, The Home Depot Inc., Wachovia Corp., The Atlanta Foundation (which was founded in the 1930s by the Peters family) and others.
"This was a great outcome for the property. The way the site was handled was excellent. SCAD has an outstanding track record for restoring historical buildings," said Paxton, "We worked with the Trust for Public Land for three years to identify the kind of user that we ended up with, and then SCAD came forward."
Ivy Hall was designed for the Peters family by Gottfried L. Norrman, one of the New South's leading architects, who designed dozens of historically significant buildings in Georgia and the South. His works include the Windsor Hotel in Americus, the Woodruff-Burns House in Inman Park and Fountain Hall on the campus of Morris Brown College.
"SCAD is so well-equipped to take on this project. It has the skill set and the stewardship and has already done right by several other Norrman-designed buildings in Savannah," said Boyd Coons, president of the Atlanta Preservation Society. The Peters family history is inextricably linked to Atlanta.
"This property is not the property of one of the founding families of Atlanta, but of the founding family," said Paxton.
Richard Peters owned all of the property that is now South Midtown, more than 400 acres for which he paid only about $20 an acre. He donated the property on which Georgia Tech stands, and was instrumental in the institution's founding.
He built the first railroad into Atlanta with George Adair, was a founder of city government, helped to move the state capital from Milledgeville to Atlanta and (with John Edgar Thompson) helped to rename Marthasville to Atlanta. The land for Ivy Hall was given to Richard Peters' son, Edward C. Peters, as a wedding present. Ivy Hall is believed to have been constructed in 1883.
Atlanta Business Chronicle - by Cathy Sutherlin Contributing writer