The origins of Dunwoody’s Williamsburg style

Soon after the incorporation of the Dunwoody Homeowner’s Association in 1970, land along Chamblee Dunwoody Road just north of Mount Vernon Road was developed into a shopping center called Dunwoody Village. The DHA was against the development at first, but liked the plan that developers Lowell Wammock and Larry Morris came up with, a Williamsburg design.

Wammock and Morris also developed The Shops of Dunwoody, Merchants Walk in Marietta, Horseshoe Bend and Dunwoody Club Forest subdivisions. One of the features originally included in The Shops of Dunwoody was a large gazebo. The gazebo was the central location for a 1984 summer concert series in the shopping center’s parking lot. Two early tenants were Ernie’s California Grill and Kaplan’s, “The fantastic kid’s department store.”

On the edge of the parking lot for Dunwoody Village was Beef n Burgundy restaurant, where First Watch, Marlowe’s Tavern, and Karen Cannon Realtors are today. I first learned that the building is a replica of Raleigh’s Tavern in colonial Williamsburg, Virginia from David Andersen and the Dunwoody Area Restaurant Reviews Facebook page. Anderson sometimes shares posts about past restaurants.

Suzanne Huff and David Long, lifelong residents of Dunwoody, recall Beef N Burgundy and the two restaurants that followed, Chuck’s Steak House, and American Roadhouse. Huff remembers Beef n Burgundy as the place to go before Homecoming at Dunwoody High School and a place where several

BUZZ