ORANGE HALL FOUNDATION

Today Orange Hall remains the signature building of the St. Marys cityscape.  It welcomes visitors to the community and continues to elicit wonder and inquiry much as it did when first constructed.  The style and scale of the building remain unprecedented in the area.  Many who visit are passing by on their way to St. Marys’ historic waterfront or beyond to the Cumberland Island National Seashore as Orange Hall has not yet become a destination.  From the street, the building appears in relatively good condition, however, below the surface, processes are at work that are undermining the building’s historic materials.  Issues such as the lack of a rain water distribution system and the associated rising damp that has deteriorated the masonry foundation, structural deficiencies and rot are all occurring within the nearly one hundred and seventy year old structure.  The original plan remains relatively intact; however the finishes and furnishings of the interior are not representative of the historic condition and therefore present a false sense of the past.  A lack of information about the history of the property has contributed to an interpretive program that is narrow and un-engaging.  The building systems do not adequately service the structure and in some cases are in critical need of repair.  The landscape has been ravaged by time, storms and modern intrusions and the specimen sour Orange trees that originally bordered the property are no longer extant.  The Orange Hall Foundation recently funded the development of a Historic Structure Report (HSR) as a critical first step in planning the future of Orange Hall.  The document provides a comprehensive record of the building’s history, its current condition and charts a course for its restoration and interpretation.  

Building Facts
Constructed ca. 1838      
Built for the Reverend  Horace Southworth Pratt and his family       
Built by  Isaac Slayton of Brookfield Massachusetts     
9,500 gross square feet      
Two floors over a raised basement      
An early and  rare surviving example of Greek Revival Style residential architecture on the lower Georgia coast 

The Orange Hall Foundation envisions a restored Orange Hall that will preserve and interpret the history of St. Marys, Coastal Georgia and the early days of America. The imprint of Native Americans, African Americans, the Civil War, the Industrial Age, epidemics, women and Southern heritage is long and varied on the Orange Hall property.  The stories of the individuals and events that comprise this history are waiting to be told.  The interpretive plan calls for a departure from the approach of traditional house museums by not focusing on a single event or a few elite occupants, but instead exploring the broad and diverse history of the community and Orange Hall’s place in it.   

The restoration project will go far beyond ‘fixing’ the building’s deficiencies, it will create a venue where citizens and visitors can explore the significant events of the past in a tangible way.   Specifically, the restoration program will include intensive archaeological study of the property to more fully explore significant Native American and historic period deposits that have received only cursory examination during previous study.   

The physical restoration of the building will focus on restoring the exterior to its mid-nineteenth century appearance in keeping with its significance and the character of the surrounding neighborhoods.  On the interior, important periods in the building’s history will be presented through exhibits and the restoration of finishes, features and furnishings from that time.   Almost every room will tell a different story.  As part of the plan, the original basement Dining Hall will be reserved as a community gathering space, gallery and gift shop to generate income for the maintenance of the property, and an upper floor bedroom will serve as a repository for research materials.  

The sensitive integration of new building systems will also take place in order to provide improved environmental control and building protection.  An elevator will be installed to provide barrier free access to all levels of the structure. Finally, the historic landscape will be recreated and the Orange trees for which the property is named, returned. Tourism is a top economic engine for St. Marys and Camden County where heritage tourism is an actively sought-after commodity.  Orange Hall is ready to be restored to its original grandeur and to serve as an anchor to this industry and provide current and future generations a glimpse into their common past.