I generally don’t cover new buildings, but this one is an exception because it’s a tribute to the Adam Strain Building. I can’t find anything online that indicates this, but if you know the Strain Building, you know this is built to look like it. It’s sided with the modern faux tabby prevalent on the coast these days and is located in the parking lot beside the abandoned Darien Outlet Mall just off Interstate 95.
When I heard in 2018 that the Adam Strain Building was slated for likely demolition, I felt anger, impending loss, and a sense of betrayal that a building with so many historical connections dating back at least 200 years could simply be allowed to go out like that. Despite being burned during the Civil War, it survived to become an unofficial symbol of Darien.
I was very aware of its endangered state, from photographs I made as early as 2009, a year after the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation brought attention to it by naming it a Place in Peril. And Darien friends who reached out over the years were cautiously optimistic, but mostly fearful, for what its future held.
I got an exciting message from one of those friends, Kit Stebbins Sutherland, in 2020. She was still cautiously optimistic, but said that the impossible had happened and the Adam Strain Building was going to be saved. Kit grew up in Darien with a mother who spent years creating an amazing photographic archive of its historic buildings and coastal landmarks, so her interest in her hometown is palpable. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Fast forward to the present and the restoration is in full swing. Milan and Marion Savic of Marietta are the new owners of the Adam Strain Building and the circa 1898 Bank of Darien [pink building to immediate left of Strain Building] and are doing everything right. They’ve emphasized the benefits of keeping everything as original as possible, especially protecting the tabby siding which is one of the distinct aspects of the Strain’s construction. It’s in the good hands of Ethos Preservation, Landmark Preservation, and Lominack Coleman Smith Architects. They’re doing the serious work of putting everything back into place and insuring the building is around for another 200 years. I hope to get more detailed photos in the near future, and will share them here.
West Darien Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
The challenges facing African-Americans in tracing their ancestry have been widely publicized in recent years and among them is the absence of marked graves in cemeteries dating from the days of slavery well into the Jim Crow era. Groups like the Black Cemetery Network are working against time to research and document these important resources.
Dunwoody Cemetery, in a patch of palmetto and oak beside Interstate 95 near Darien, is a perfect example of such a place. The beautiful vernacular headstone of Rena P. Wilson, who was born just after slavery’s end, is the only memorial I could locate here. Most of the earlier markers were made of wood and are long lost to the elements.
The land where Dunwoody is located was originally part of a grant from King George II to Sir Patrick Houston dating to 1757. When the land was purchased by James Smith upon Houston’s death in 1798, it was named Sidon and became part of Smith’s network of profitable rice operations along Cathead Creek. A tabby plantation house, slave dwellings, and this slave cemetery made up the main part of the plantation, which was operated by Smith’s daughter, Elizabeth Dunwoody. All traces of the plantation are now gone, except this cemetery.
Grace Baptist Church is an important vernacular Gothic Revival church and has been a landmark of Darien’s Gullah-Geechee community since its construction circa 1910-1915. Though segregated, the community was well-established in Darien and several architecturally significant historic churches from the first generations after Emancipation can still be found throughout the historic district, including First African Baptist, St. Cyprian’s, and St. John Baptist. A petition to to save the church can be accessed and signed here. According to Missy Brandt Wilson, notable names associated with the church include the Bleach and Stewart families, who found their way back to relatives in Darien after being sold during the Weeping Time, and W. H. Rogers, the only African-American member of the Georgia General Assembly in 1907.
In recent years, it was home to Emmanuel House of Prayer in Historic Grace, but the congregation has apparently been inactive for a long time. A tree fall impacted the rear section of the building a few years ago and lack of repair has led to encroachment of wildlife and vegetation. The collapsed section of roof is evident and has begun “pushing out” the left side of the cruciform. As a result, the city of Darien has designated the property dangerous and unfit, and will likely condemn it in the near future. Their concern is understandable, but hopefully, they will work with advocates who want to see it saved.
The stained glass windows are thought to have been placed during the 1930s.
They are perhaps the most endearing feature of the design.
Though they look damaged, most are in good condition. The blur effect is from plastic placed on the windows to protect from moisture. Note the collapsing roof at the right in this photo.
I think the loss of this resource would be a tragedy, not just for its aesthetic value but for its historic connections.
Since I don’t know what is being planned, I can only hope that signing a petition will help in a small way. Saving the church should at least be something the city will consider. It’s definitely worth saving.
Vernon Square-Columbus Square Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This gable-front bungalow was built by Theodor “Teddy” Atkinson (1923-2016) in 1947. It’s typical of a style very common locally in the first half of the 20th century. If you like vernacular architecture, Darien has some nice examples in its historic district.
With plantings of emblematic Southern shrubs such as camellia and azalea, cabbage palms and canna lilies, I would say this yard is of a Southern style once nearly ubiquitous but not much encountered anymore. The burning barrel was ever-present in yards of another time, as well, and many still use them. But it made me think of the old days.
If you drive through Darien you won’t be able to miss this big old wooden boat sitting in the middle of town. It’s permanently “docked” beside the old McIntosh County Jail, which serves today as the arts center. After years away from Georgia, it was at the end of its service and was soon to be scrapped. Friends of the Kit Jones, in collaboration with local government and encouraged by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, wanted to save it and return it to Georgia, and that’s just what they did. The following history is abridged from their website which is really worth a read. The level of research they’ve done is impressive.
The Kit Jones was built to order for R. J. Reynolds, Jr., of pine and live oak milled on Sapelo Island, which Reynolds owned at the time. Blueprints for the vessel were drawn by prominent naval architects Sparkman & Stephens of New York and construction was overseen between 1938-1939 by Axel Sparre, a Danish shipwright who was living in nearby Brunswick. Gullah-Geechee residents of Sapelo provided much of the labor.
She is 60 feet long, 17 feet wide, 18 feet tall, and weighs 60,000 pounds. Her namesake is Katharine Talbott Jones (Kit), wife of Sea Island developer Alfred W. Jones. They traveled in the same circles as Reynolds and Jones had spent time on Sapelo with then-owner Howard Coffin the the 1920s.
The Kit Jones has served as a tugboat, a ferry for the people of Sapelo, a freight hauler, and, a fire boat during World War II.
She began an association as a research vessel with the University of Georgia marine sciences program in 1953 that ended with her acquisition by the University of Mississippi in 1985. She served for many more years and was capsized by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She came back for a few more years but was finally retired in 2013.
Restoration work was done from 2019-2023 and everything looks ship shape. Ultimately, this is an amazing “save” and my hats are off to this community and especially the Friends of the Kit Jones.
The tiny sliver of land visible on the horizon in this image is Creighton Island, a wonderfully obscure place on the McIntosh County coast.
The abridged sketch which follows, archived from an older website, was written by Jeannine Cook and details the island’s fascinating history.
Creighton Island is a privately-owned, inner barrier island in McIntosh County… It was formed by aeons of rising and falling ocean levels combined with ever-changing deposits of sand ridges. The roughly 1,100 acres of high ground on Creighton date mainly from the Pleistocene era (40,000 B.C.), but are still being shaped afresh by wind, waves, tides and storms. Today, the island is roughly 2 1/2 miles long and a mile wide.
Creighton bears testimony to human activities during at least the last 3,500-4000 years. Archaeologist Clarence B. Moore uncovered important funerary materials – urns, stone and copper chisels, hatchets…- on Creighton’s north end in 1896-97. It is said that the Guale Indians considered the north end of the Island as a very sacred burial ground. Later, it is possible that the first European colony on the eastern seaboard of North America, San Miguel de Gualdape, took brief root on Creighton in 1526 when Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon tried to establish 600 Spanish and African settlers on this coast. By 1756, Daniel Demetre had acquired “John Smith’s Island”, as Creighton was then designated. In the 1770s, William DeBrahm, Surveyor General to King George III, noted the existence of unexplainable entrenchments and ruins on the Island. The mysteries DeBrahm created about Creighton have lingered to this day.
The Island acquired its present name from its 1778 owner, Alexander Creighton, a Savannah businessman. Timbering and farming (especially cotton, sugar cane and corn) were important activities, despite occasional devastating hurricanes…Thomas Spalding worked with his son-in-law, William Cooke, owner of Creighton after 1838, and during that period, tabby dwellings were built at the north end. Their vestiges remain today. Freed slaves, based at the north end, remained on the Island after the Civil War. The north end was also a focus of important timber-loading facilities for large ships at the “Sapelo port” in 1880-98, complete with US post office and telegraph lines connecting Creighton to Darien. The 1898 hurricane destroyed these port facilities; they were rebuilt but by 1910, the timber boom era in McIntosh County had finally ended. In 1947, Creighton Island was acquired by the present owners…
…The Island’s long, diverse history combines with great natural beauty to represent a unique microcosm of Georgia’s coast. Today’s owners deeply respect the environmental importance of their island sanctuary…
Originating in swampland east of Young Man Road in northern McIntosh County, the White Chimney River [also referred to as White Chimney Creek] flows southerly for several miles before joining the Sapelo River. I haven’t located an origin for the name, but would presume it to be related to an early house or other landmark with white chimneys. Seems logical, but who knows…
The White Chimney River is surrounded by marsh and hammock on both sides for most of its brief course.
This landscape is typical of estuaries along the Atlantic seaboard.
In the southeast, they generally feature palmettos, oaks, and cedars.
A web of smaller creeks feed into the river from all directions.
Like the rivers they support, they are dependent on the tides.
These estuaries are integral to the abundance of marine life that attracts fishermen to the region.
This floating dock is located at Cooper’s Point, now part of a residential development bordering the White Chimney River. It’s a private dock, but anyone can access the river at the White Chimney Creek Boat Ramp on Shellman Bluff Road. The river is particularly known for its abundance of Spotted Seatrout. Croaker is also common.
Oysters are also dependent on the estuarine environment and are quite abundant along the banks of the White Chimney River.
This sign, across from Hunter’s Cafe, sums up the mood around Shellman Bluff; no hurries and no worries. The words change from time to time, but the message really doesn’t. It overlooks the idyllic Julienton River, a tributary of the Sapelo River.
Hunter’s Cafe is one of the best loved local hangouts on the Georgia coast and it’s the epicenter of “downtown” Shellman Bluff. Open since 1951, it’s located in a World War II-era army barrack acquired as surplus from nearby Fort Stewart.
It’s a no-frills kind of place that caters to locals while welcoming the occasional tourist. If you’re in a rush, go elsewhere, because they don’t get in a hurry here. If you read internet reviews, you’ll hear people complaining about the wait time, but that misses the point of Hunter’s Cafe. It’s as much about the experience and atmosphere as it is the food. The original section of the restaurant feels like a neighborhood gathering place, and the bar, added in the 1970s, has the ambiance of a classic dive. And the staff are very welcoming and friendly, even if you’re not a local.
The food is really good. I visited with my parents and my aunt. My mother ordered fried green tomatoes, which I generally don’t care for, as an appetizer. There was something different about the Hunter’s version and I enjoyed them. I also don’t care for battered french fries, but their perfectly floured shoestring potatoes were memorable and way above average. The fresh Georgia shrimp was excellent, as it must be in a place like this, and it was accompanied by the most perfectly fried hush puppy to be found, amazingly light and flavorful. My mother and I agreed we could have made a meal of the hush puppies.
