On the northern edge of Buckhead, Brookhaven developed as Atlanta's first country club neighborhood. It begins just north of the intersection of Peachtree Road and Peachtree-Dunwoody Road. Its boundaries generally are Peachtree Road on the east, Peachtree-Dunwoody on the west and south and Windsor Parkway on the north.
Now sometimes referred to as West Brookhaven, it is an enclave of large, elegant Tudor, Colonial, Georgian and English cottage homes in a lush landscape of broad, winding streets, densely wooded hollows and gently rolling hills with the Capital City Country Club as its heart.
In what was once Creek Indian land, the area's first white settler was Harris Goodwin, a South Carolinian who homesteaded a tract on both sides of what is now Peachtree Road in the early 1830s. Harris Goodwin later brought his father, Solomon, to the area. The Goodwin home and a small graveyard in which they are buried survive at 3931 Peachtree Road near the intersection of Dresden Drive.
The original log cabin on the Echota Indian Trail was expanded in the 1830s and 1840s into the present home. In 1864, it was a landmark for Federal troops closing in on Atlanta during the Civil War. Goodwin descendants still own the property. The home is the oldest extant house in DeKalb County. It is open to the public from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on the third Sunday of every month, and a family member is usually there to serve as a guide.
In 1910, 150 acres on the west side of Peachtree was bought by the Mechanical and Manufacturers Club for a golf club to be called Brookhaven. The course, which encircles a large lake and is surrounded by woods, was laid out by course architect Herbert Barker. The original clubhouse was replaced in the 1920s by the present French Provincial structure of mellow stone. Shortly after opening in 1911, the club became part of the downtown Capital City Club and became known as the Capital City Country Club.
In the 1980s, the area was placed on the National Register of Historic Places as the "first planned golf club community in Georgia."
