Tybee Island Strand Cottages Historic District

About this property

Tybee Island Strand Cottages Historic District, also known as The Strand, is a historic district on Tybee Island, Georgia including 18 cottages, walkways, landscape and other features that are largely unchanged since the historic era of Tybee Island as a coastal resort. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. The district includes portions of what were lots 73 through 84 of the Tybee Improvement Company, which purchased the island in 1873 and subdivided "The Strand" area in that year. It is located between Butler Avenue and the Atlantic Ocean, from a bit past 12th Street to 14th Street. This is the section between two former hotels, Ocean House at the north and Tybee Hotel at the south. Besides the cottages, two other contributing resources of the district were identified: "one historic site consisting of the overall coastal landscape design; and one structure consisting of the entire system of communal walkways and boardwalk." The walkways ran from hotel to hotel through the cottages. The 1873 plan was for each of the 12 narrow lots to contain a single cottage set back at the center of their lots, with a long grassy expanse in a front area and an extensive rear area. A common path crossed the properties at the front steps of the cottages. Since then, multiple cottages have been inserted into most of the lots and most lots have been legally subdivided. However, within the historic district, three lots (77, 80, 81) still conform to their original 1873 plan, two (74, 75) have their original front portions, and one (83) has its original rear area. Tybee Island is the only example of the American coastal resort movement in Georgia. The movement finds its roots in the English coastal resorts of Scarborough and Briton, in which British physicians expounded the virtues of the curative powers of sea water as an 18th-century panacea. By the 19th century, this idea was transplanted to America and gave rise to the coastal resorts along the Atlantic coast. Many Georgians as well as other people throughout the South traveled north to resorts in Long Branch, [New Jersey], Cape May, New Jersey, and Nantucket, Massachusetts. These resorts were popular and set the standard for resorts by offering such amenities as transportation networks, hotels, service-oriented businesses, and amusement establishments. The resort development of Tybee Island was modeled after these resort areas. At the height of its resort popularity, Tybee Island featured grand hotels, dance pavilions, bath houses, boarding houses and inns, service-oriented businesses, railroad stops, and private summer cottages.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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