Retro RETREATS

JEKYLL ISLAND’S MIDCENTURY RANCHES SPEAK TO THE TRANSITION FROM PRIVATE RESORT TO PUBLIC PARK WITH AFFORDABLE LOTS.

By JEANÉE LEDOUX

Photography by KRISTIN KARCH

The story of a place is in its structures. On Jekyll Island, the Tudor cottages, Mediterranean Revival mansions, and other grand turn-of-the-century buildings in the historic district tell the tale of the island’s past as a private club for elite families. But Jekyll’s clusters of midcentury modern homes, with their clerestory windows framing views of loblolly pines, have something to tell as well.

Jekyll Island was destined for an architectural rebirth in 1947, when the Georgia State Department of Parks bought the island. In 1950, a legislative act created the Jekyll Island Authority (JIA) to run the park like a business, which included leasing residential parcels of property. Over the next two decades, families of relatively modest means—compared with the oil and lumber barons of earlier years—built their dream homes, many of which reflect the design concepts of pioneer modernist architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier.

“These [homes] are just now becoming appreciated on a larger scale,” says Taylor Davis, a historic preser-