We started our day with breakfast at the Hampton Inn. We then got ourselves ready for a day of exploring. Yesterday the temperature was in the upper 70s, so we were in shorts and short-sleeved shirts. When we went out to the car at 8:45 in our “summer” clothes this morning, we were shocked to find it very chilly, about 52 degrees. So back up to the room we went to put on long pants and sweatshirts.
I did not know anything about Jekyll Island when I picked it for one of our stops, I just thought it would be a nice beach stop, Jekyll being a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. But what we explored today was really a walk back into a gilded age.
There is an historic district, a national historic landmark, where the Jekyll Island Club was established and existed from 1886 until its end in 1942. Jekyll Island was explored by James Oglethorpe (I remembered that name from civics class as the founder of the colony in Georgia) around 1735. Before then, Native Americans used the island seasonally. Oglethorpe left a soldier on the island around 1740, William Horton, to staff a military outpost on the island to ward off the Spanish who were in Florida. Horton was the original British occupant and eventually established a successful plantation. His house has been preserved, or at least the exterior was, and we stopped by.
After his death in 1749, the island went through a series of owners before finally being purchased by Christophe Poulain DuBignon in 1792. The DuBignons enjoyed a successful business raising Sea Island Cotton on their plantation for nearly a century. Following the Civil War, Christophe’s great-grandson, John Eugene DuBignon, marketed Jekyll Island as the perfect site for a hunting club.
In 1886, the island was purchased by the Jekyll Island Club, a turn-of-the century vacation resort patronized by the nation’s leading families from primarily the northeast. Club Members included such prominent figures as J.P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, William K. Vanderbilt, Marshall Field, and William Rockefeller. In 1904, Munsey’s Magazine called the Jekyll Island Club “the richest, the most exclusive, the most inaccessible club in the world.”
The Jekyll Island Club built a clubhouse where members stayed which is now a hotel. Eventually, members started building “cottages” where their families and servants stayed for the season, which was January through March. In the historic district there are 33 buildings preserved from the late 1880s through the early 1900s . The grounds are absolutely lovely, with very large live oaks with loads of Spanish moss dripping down from their sweeping limbs. We got a good overview of the historic district at the Jekyll Island Museum and then on a 90-minute tram tour of the district. It was really helpful to hear the narration and we learned a whole lot about the Jekyll Island Club.
The Jekyll Island Club Hotel is the anchor around which all the other buildings fan out. It’s a grand wooden structure with a large turret.
Look closely at the last photo above. You’ll see a woman with a croquet mallet. It was amusing to see that out on the lawn in front of the hotel was a large croquet field and there were several folks, all dressed in white, banging the croquet ball around.
We had wandered around the hotel a bit after our tram tour and ended up having lunch on a wide porch overlooking the courtyard in the back of the hotel. This place is a wonderful throwback to a very different age.
Now let me tell you about some of the cottages. Suffice to say, they were all fabulous mansions. They were in all kinds of architectural styles. A couple of them reminded me of grand Adirondack lodges. A couple others were in a Mediterranean style. All of them were quite beautiful. We got to tour inside two of them, the Du Bignon House and the Mistletoe House. There is a Jekyll Island Authority responsible for overseeing the restoration of all the remaining buildings and the mansions are being slowly restored. The Du Bignon House was one of the original homes where the guy who sold Jekyll Island to the Club lived. Later, the hired caretaker lived in the house for 42 years until the demise of the Club.
Christine fell in love with the Mistletoe House, which was owned by a family named Porter. The house had really large, airy rooms. The Porters loved entertaining and so the house was built to accommodate entertaining. The main living room had 3 large French doors that the Porters would throw open, take all the furniture out into the yard, and host yard parties.
Here are some of the other houses we saw from the outside.
We heard a really funny story about the Crane Cottage. The Crane family was involved with many businesses, but one of them was the manufacture of plumbing fixtures. Mr. Crane supervised the beginning of construction on his cottage, but then went back home. When he returned to see the completed cottage, he was horrified to find that the builders had installed American Standard plumbing fixtures throughout the cottage, not Crane plumbing fixtures. He wasn’t a happy camper.
Two other interesting things. One is that the first condominium in the country was built on Jekyll Island. The place was called San Souci, and one of the Rockefeller bought a unit. Another factoid is that the first transcontinental telephone call was made from Jekyll Island in 1915. The call went across country to San Francisco and back to Washington, DC.
We visited a non-denominational chapel that was built for the Club members in 1904, Faith Chapel.
It is a lovely little chapel whose claim to fame is two very beautiful stained glass windows. One is the Adoration of the Christ Child-created by Maitland Armstrong and his daughter, Helen. The window was installed as a memorial to Joseph Stickney, a charter member of the Jekyll Island Club.
The other is a magnificent, signed example of the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany. This window was installed by the Jekyll Island Club and dedicated in 1921 to Frederick Gilbert Bourne, who had served as the club’s fourth president.
Another interesting bit of information about the historic district was about the community established by the servants. While some families housed their servants in their homes, others, and those hired locally, lived in dormitories. There was a whole community for the servants for shopping and supplies. All the stores and supply buildings have been preserved and are now gift shops. But these are cute little houses and it was fascinating to read about them.
We really enjoyed our time exploring the historic district. It was a lovely area, so peaceful and quaint.
We then went exploring and drove around the island, which is only 10 miles long and 3 miles wide. There are a few residential areas, several areas of hotels and condos, but for the most part, it is salt marshes, dunes, and wooded areas. And it really is quiet.
We had seen a section of beach on the map called Driftwood Beach, and I had seen a photo of the beach and wanted to see it. We walked through the shrub forest to the beach and we found an absolutely fantastic sight. When I think of driftwood on a beach, I think of smallish pieces of wood. but this Driftwood Beach was covered with huge whole trees of driftwood of the most amazing shapes and sizes. It was just amazing. We almost couldn’t believe our eyes.
We loved Driftwood beach. What a fantastic thing to have seen. Afterwards, it was just a little too early for dinner, so we drove down to what’s called Beach Village, the small shopping area that is the center of activity. We went in to the Westin for a drink. We sat outside, but it was really chilly. However, it is one of the few places where you can actually see the ocean, where there isn’t a dune between the hotel and the water.
Afterwards, we drove to a little restaurant called the Beach House Restaurant for dinner. We had a nice dinner and, surprisingly, we could also see the ocean from our seats. So, it was a nice end to a really great day enjoying an ocean view. The only thing we didn’t like about Jekyll Island is the gazillion little grays everywhere. There were clouds of them all over and they were really obnoxious. Fortunately, while annoying, their bites weren’t as bad as the gnats at home.
This was a really wonderful day! Tomorrow it is off to Crystal River, FL.