Brookhaven is an unincorporated community located on the western edge of Dekalb County, Georgia, adjoining Sandy Springs and Buckhead. Brookhaven is west of Chamblee. Brookhaven is bisected by Peachtree Road and it stretches to Peachtree-Dunwoody Road on the west, to Johnson Ferry Road on the east, and to Buford Highway on the south. Brookhaven is home to two golf courses, the Capital City Club--listed on the National Register of Historic Places^[1] --and Peachtree Golf Club.

Brookhaven is less than two miles (3 km) from Lenox Square Mall and Phipps Plaza, located in Atlanta's Buckhead district and two of the most affluent shopping centers in the United States. Within Brookhaven, there are four commercial districts. The first is along Peachtree Road, immediately east of Lenox Square Mall and Phipps Plaza. This district primarily consists of small retail centers and restaurants.

A new Brookhaven retail center is emerging with the development of Town Brookhaven by the Sembler Company, located at the intersection of Town Boulevard (formerly, Cross Keys Road) and Peachtree Road. Other districts include the Dresden district, located along Dresden Drive, and a commercial corridor along Buford Highway bordering the southernmost residential areas of Brookhaven made up of neighborhoods such as Drew Valley, Lenox Park, HillsDale, Pine Hills, and Skyland.

The modern heart of Brookhaven community is generally accepted to be the intersection of  North Druid Hills Road and Peachtree Road. The intersection is dominated by the Brookhaven/Oglethorpe MARTA Rail Station which opened on December 15, 1984 and is one stop north of Lenox Station and one stop south of Chamblee Station. North Druid Hills Road has been known as Old Decatur Road or Decatur Highway in the past as the primary route to the City of Decatur from areas north of Atlanta.

History of Brookhaven

Early settlers knew what is now considered the eastern reaches of Brookhaven as Cross  Keys. The area near the current heart of Brookhaven was known as Goodwin's Crossing. Prior to settlement by Europeans, the Creek Indians used the area as a hunting ground and as "no-man's" land between their settlements and the Cherokee peoples north of the Chattahoochee River. What is now Peacthree Road was developed following a traditional Native American trade route known as the Echota Indian Trail. Folklore relates that the Creek and Cherokee used the present day site of Cross Keys High School on North Druid Hills Road as a meeting place.

In 1821, a treaty was made by the U.S. government with the Creek nation and the land in DeKalb County (formerly Henry Co.) was dispersed by lottery to settlers. John L. Evins began a large plantation in the area. Nancy Creek was named after an ancestor of the Evins family. Harris Goodwin was a South Carolinian who homesteaded a tract on both sides of what is now Peachtree Road in the early 1830s. Harris Goodwin brought his father, Solomon, to the area. Later, some of the land in the area passed to Salson Stovall. Nearly all of what is now the Brookhaven Historic District was developed on land owned at one time by Goodwin and/or Stovall.

Some of the people who settled in the area taken from the Creek did so at a crossing of rough trails, which became known as Cross Keys. The site of old Cross Keys was located just north of the Peachtree Golf Club. This site is referenced as "old" Cross Keys because an associated post office was later moved east to the Chamblee area. A historical marker on Johnson Ferry Rd and Donaldson Rd denotes the approximate location of old Cross Keys.

Ashford Dunwoody Road was known as "Old Cross Keys Road" at the time of the Civil War and was used by Sherman's Generals as an approach to Decatur and Stone Mountain.The Peacthree Golf Club's clubhouse is actually the plantation home of Samuel House and was used by Sherman and his Generals during the Battle of Atlanta as a command center. Windsor Parkway which meets Ashford Dunwoody Road at the golf club was formerly known as House Road.

What is now a business district of Brookhaven and the home of MARTA's Brookhaven Station was once a small settlement known as Goodwin's, or Goodwin's Crossing, named after Solomon Goodwin, who built his home in 1831 at what is now 3967 Peachtree Road. The house is still standing but is now located at 3931 Peachtree Road. It is the oldest extant house in DeKalb County. The house once occupied the corner of North Druid Hills Road (formerly Decatur Road) and Peacthree Road but was moved south on Peachtree to make way for the development of a hotel.

During the first two decades of the 20th century, wealthy Atlantans began to build summer homes and estates around Buckhead and in the area known as Brookhaven. In 1910 the Mechanical and Manufacturers Club purchased 150 acres for the Brookhaven Country Club to include a lake, clubhouse, golf course and exclusive homes. Since many of the members of this Club also belonged to the prestigious Capital City Club, it was a logical step for that organization to purchase the Brookhaven Country Club for its own use in 1913.

Soon, the planned construction of grand homes started on the carefully laid out, curvilinear streets of the neighborhood. Some of Atlanta's wealthiest citizens moved to the development, their homes designed by the city's leading architects, including Neel Reid, A.F.N. Everett, and Pringle and Smith. The present clubhouse was built in 1927 in the Norman Revival style by Prestons Stevens. The golf course architect at Brookhaven, as well as for the Druid Hills golf course, was Herbert Barker of Garden City, Long Island.

Significant development in Brookhaven continued when Oglethorpe University reopened in 1915 on land just north of the present MARTA station -- the school being closed during and after the Civil War. Prominent benefactors helped Oglethorpe revive and thrive in subsequent decades. Notable were: John Thomas Lupton, Coca-Cola bottler from Chattanooga, Tennessee; Atlanta business community members Harry Hermance and Mrs. Robert J. Lowry; and publisher William Randolph Hearst. The latter gave to Oglethorpe a sizable donation of land.

In the early 1930s the Oglethorpe campus covered approximately 600 acres, including 30-acre Silver Lake, which was renamed Lake Phoebe after the publisher's mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst. Most of the facility's oldest buildings were designed by Morgan and Dillon, one of Atlanta's oldest and best known architectural businesses.

In the early 1900s, a commercial district began to grow along Peachtree Road to serve the increasing residents around the club and others moving to the surrounding neighborhood. In 1936 a community movie theatre opened with the film "Heidi" and by 1950 stores included a shoe store, drug store, hardware, filling station and an A&P grocery store that was subsequently operated as Colonial Foods.

In the 1970s Peachtree Road was widened to six lanes and the gentle curve of that thoroughfare in the Brookhaven community was straightened. Older businesses were eliminated by the expansion. Afterward, the heavy rail lines and accompanying train station for MARTA came to occupy land on the east side of Peachtree Road.

In the 1980s, the Capital City Country Club development became a National Register Historic District as the first "planned early 20th-century suburb conceived as a golf-course/country club community."

During the 1990s, much of the lower quality housing stock in communities near bythe Historic District became the target of infill development. Many  smaller working class and middle class homes built in the 1930s - 1960s gave way to high end, larger estate-type homes in communities on both sides of Peachtree Road in neighborhoods like Brookhaven Fields, Brookhaven Heights, Ashford Park, Lynwood Park, and Oglethorpe Estates among others off of North Druid Hills Road, Dresden Drive, and Windsor Parkway

On February 14, 2005, the Atlanta Regional Commission announced a Brookhaven application would receive $80,000 for a Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) study. With DeKalb County matching $20,000, that meant $100,000 total for a study of the core of Brookhaven around the MARTA station, a strip of Peacthree Road, and a portion of Dresden Drive and North Druid Hills Road

The Brookhaven LCI was approved by the Board of Commissioners in January 2006, and put into place as a zoning overlay on May 22, 2007 to guide the development in the heart of Brookhaven's primary commercial district.