CODA BAHAMAS BOUND 2024-2025 (47)

  CODA : Still hunkered down in Georgia:  enjoying waiting for the wind to abate.

13 November 2024

Plum Orchard Mansion Anchorage, Brickhill River,

Cumberland Island National Seashore, Cumberland Island, Georgia  

Plum Orchard Mansion (summer home of George Carnegie, son of Lucy Carnegie).

Lucy gave each of her Children $ 10,000.00 as a wedding gift to build a house.  Apparently $10,000.00 went a long way back in the 1890's.

The Carnegie family gave the house and surrounding property to the National Park Service in 1971.

Marc-  We are still hunkered down at anchor in front of the Plum Orchard Mansion awaiting better weather.  One other boat has joined us since yesterday.  Great quiet place to anchor out with a phenomenal dinghy dock that the Park Service is famous for.  Getting to that dock was exciting this morning since we had some issue with the outboard.  The engine would run fine and then just stop.  The exciting part is there is a lot of current in the river and we were not alone: an alligator came over to investigate.  I was imaging rowing with an alligator on our stern (just like a scene from Peter Pan) when the engine started (it was only a kink in the fuel line).   

Our Park Ranger tour of Plum Orchard Mansion was great and I will leave the details for my crew.  We also walked about 5.5 miles in the forest trails trying to get back to the beach.  We opted out when the trail turned into a dark water muddy mess in a marshy area called Sweetwater Lake (no bridge provided and alligators live here).  Sad since we could hear the waves crashing on the beach beyond.

Entry Hall.

Dining Room with portrait on Lucy Carnegie on the wall.

Game room.

The Mansion has 36 rooms and 11 bathrooms.  It also has call buttons in all of the rooms.  

Servant's pantry call center.

They could call for tea to be served.

The grand second floor hallway.

What is fascinating about this house is the parallel universe for the staff to use in the house.  There is a hallway behind the wall next to this one painted yellow and without carpeting for staff.  It leads to separate stairways and servant's quarters both in the back of the house and on the third floor.  It makes o think of the recent Masterpiece series "Downton Abbey".The place even had one of the first Otis elevators.

The Coast Guard still has not come to retrieve this errant buoy.

More horses.

Another mare and her foal.

This is what our hike felt like.

Coda waiting for us.

Lou- Plum Orchard mansion was wild! I was envious of the volunteer tour guide who gets to live there!  One of the other tourists asked her if she's seen any ghosts while staying in the house. "No," she said quickly, "but even if they're here, I don't want to see them!"

When we were exploring the basement, our guide mentioned that none of Lucy's nine children (Lucy was the matriarch who lived in the castle up the road we saw the ruins of yesterday) ever worked. Lucy gave them an allowance.

I asked if they'd gotten really into their hobbies, painting or hunting or something, and our guide said "Sure, they must have. They were people like us." 

A fellow visitor told me that on another tour she'd been on, she heard that Lucy's kids did not have the best mental health. There was some alcoholism, apparently. "You've got to have purpose," another visitor reflected.

Some fancy things: a 16-foot-deep indoor pool, a steam-heated towel rack in the bathroom, one-of-a-kind stamped wallpaper! For some reason, more than the gorgeous Tiffany lamps, various taxidermied animals, and elaborate staff-summoning systems, the wallpaper impressed on me how very wealthy they were. 

It was in the library-- the wallpaper was a striking yellow/blue/green flower pattern. You know how usually wallpaper has tiny, intricate designs or is just kind of boring? This was not that! The flowers were huge! They looked like they were growing right out of the floorboards up into the ceiling! 

And our guide told us that after the wallpaper was all put up in this room, the pattern was destroyed, because the Carnegies did not want anyone else to have it!

I was also very into their doorknobs. 

In the staff's part of the house, they were made of brass, but in the fancy part of the house, the doorknobs looked like crystal balls! Our guide told us they were made of glass, and definitely pricier than your average doorknob. 

My favorite thing of all was the entryway, though. It had a cozy sunken nook area with a fireplace and places to sit that looked a bit like very short church pews. 

And then, there was the big, impressive wooden staircase with its huge windows! It felt like a properly glorious haunted house. It could definitely be in a movie. 

I'm off to dinner!

Toodaloo :)