Carl L. Peters was born on October 7, 1881 in Soest, Germany On July 29, 1894 at the age of 12 years, he, along with his parents, two sisters and a brother arrived in the United States on board the North German Lloyd Steamer

“ Stuttgart”. The Peters family settled in Indianapolis a few years later, residing in the sizable German community at that time. Carl Peters married the daughter of earlier German immi­grants and found employment at Toby Rupp Ironworks here in the city. During that employment, he became a friend with another German American immigrant the name of John Geiger. Stimulated by their iron­work backgrounds and their entrepreneurial spirits, in 1905, the two of them agreed to partner a business under the firm name of Geiger & Peters. During the early years, the firm did miscellaneous ironwork for its customers in Indianapolis. An example of some of that early work is the wrought iron fence around Crown Hill Cemetery In those days, each of those irons pickets were hand forged and fabricated one at a time in their small shop. The 1910 decade of their partnership saw steel delivered in a wagon pulled by a horse named "Pete”, who one day, had been driven pulling the empty wagon to the Peters' residence, which was located at 1015 East Ohio Street. Left hitched to the wagon, Pete apparently felt it was time to return to the ironworks, so without a driver, the horse pulled the wagon through the streets of Indianapolis, and was found standing at the shop.

The business continued on, growing and expanding through the 1920's moving into larger structural projects of buildings and public works. Because of continued projects for the State, the company was incor­porated in the State of Indiana

on July 12, 1929. Its char­ter today contains this quote from the original docu­ment:

"To manufacture, buy, sell, and generally to deal in and with structural steel and ornamental iron and material of all kinds, either raw or manufactured, that may be used in structural steel and iron, to contract for the purchase, sale, delivery and erection of steel and iron products, and all its allied and inner-dependent business; to have the general rights, privileges, and powers as provided in Section 3 of an act of the General Assembly of the State of Indiana approved March 16, 1929, and known as The Indiana General Assembly Act."

The depression hit later that year, and as it deepened, John Geiger sold his interest in the corporation to Carl Peters, who nevertheless retained the name of the corporation as “Geiger & Peters, Inc.”

Mr. Peters and his wife had two children, Oscar C. Peters, born in 1906, and Harold I. Peters, born in 1908. As the depression deepened in 1934, tragedy visited the firm with the untimely death of Carl L. Peters who was struck by an automobile while seeking assistance for his disabled vehicle north of Indianapolis. This brought a crisis in the history of Geiger and Peters - in the middle of the depression and with a leader of the firm gone, his two sons, Oscar and Harold, attempted to keep the firm afloat. Business was difficult to get. Let alone on a prof­itable basis in those years.

During the 30’s, a tragic fire in one of the fraternity houses at the DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana caused the various fraternities at that University to require fire escapes.

They came to Geiger & Peters, who built fire escapes for those fraternity houses, which amounted to the first good business the firm had had