Villa Ospo was one of the last structures built in the Jekyll Island Club era. It took its name from the Guale word for either the island, or a village thereon, and has Spanish Eclectic and Italian Renaissance elements.

It was built by architect John Russell Pope* for Walter Jennings (14 September 1858-9 January 1933). Jennings was a member of Skull and Bones at Yale, a Columbia Law School classmate of Theodore Roosevelt, and director of Standard Oil of New Jersey. He was a student of history, as well, and helped successfully lobby the Georgia legislature to correct the long-used spelling ‘Jekyl’ to ‘Jekyll’, as it should have been all along since Oglethorpe named the island for Sir Joseph Jekyll.

*-Notably, Pope was also the architect of the Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery of Art].

Jennings died here on 9 January 1933. He and his wife were injured in an automobile accident on Oglethorpe Road on 4 January and though a heart attack was listed as his cause of death, it’s possible this was brought on from injuries sustained in the accident.

Jekyll Island Historic District, National Register of Historic Places + National Historic Landmark