The Jekyll Island Club

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​The Jekyll Island Club

...Continued from yesterday:
       Tom and I had been invited by some dear old friends to come and visit them at their wintering-over home on beautiful Jekyll Island off the southern coast of Georgia.     

      The island, we were to learn, was purchased in the 1880's by a group of ultra-rich captains of American industry, among them J.P. Morgan, William Rockefeller, Marshall Field, William K. Vanderbilt and Joseph Pulitzer, as a getaway from the travails of work and the city.
      Seeking the pleasures of nature and the simple life, it was agreed upon by the magnates who purchased the land that the Jekyll Island Club, as they christened this endeavor, would be a haven of plain rustic living. 
       And so the men built for themselves humble island cottages:

      However, if one preferred the experience of communal living, accommodations could be procured at the Jekyll Island clubhouse.  

       Jekyll Island remained a thriving respite for the richest until the Great Depression in 1929, when those members hit with financial hardship were forced to relinquish their island abodes. From there membership in the Jekyll Island Club declined, until in 1947 the state of Georgia purchased the island from the remaining members and declared it a state park.
​       Today the grounds of the original Jekyll Island Club is a historic district open to the public. Of the sixteen original Jekyll Island cottages, eleven are still standing and the restored cottages and the clubhouse are now hotels and event venues known as the Jekyll Island Club Resort. The clubhouse is also open for tours.
​
        The Jekyll Island Club Resort clubhouse

   The rest of Jekyll Island is a  community of full-time and seasonal residents as well as visitors to the island, among whom for the next two days Tom and I would be. 
     To be continued...