Warm Springs Historic District

Infobox_nrhp | name =Warm Springs Historic District
nrhp_type = nhld


caption =
location= S of GA 194 and W of GA 85W, Warm Springs, Georgia
locmapin = Georgia
area =
built =1924
architect= Henry Toombs; Et al.
architecture= Colonial Revival
designated= January 16 1980cite web|url=http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=1433&ResourceType=District
title=Warm Springs Historic District |accessdate=2008-05-01|work=National Historic Landmark summary listing|publisher=National Park Service]
added = July 30 1974cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/|title=National Register Information System|date=2007-01-23|work=National Register of Historic Places|publisher=National Park Service]
governing_body = State
refnum=74000694

Warm Springs Historic District is a historic district in Warm Springs, Georgia. It includes Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Little White House and the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation, where Roosevelt indulged in its warm springs. Other buildings in the district tend to range from the 1920s and 1930s. Much of the district looks the same as it did when Roosevelt frequented the area.citation|title=PDFlink| [http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text/74000694.pdf National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Warm Springs Historic District] |32 KB|date=April 10, 1979 |author=James H. Charleton |publisher=National Park Service and PDFlink| [http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Photos/74000694.pdf "Accompanying 13 photos, exterior and interior, from 1974, 1979, and undated"] |32 KB]

Evidence indicates that prehistoric man was the first to use the springs, and as when Roosevelt used the springs, the temperature was convert|89|°F|°C.

Residents of Savannah, Georgia began spending vacations at Bullochville in the late 18th century as a way to escape yellow fever, finding the number of warm springs in the vicinity of Bullochville very attractive. In the 1880s and 1890s, traveling to the warm springs was attractive as a way to get away from Atlanta, and many more prosperous Southerners would vacation there. Traveling by railroad to Durand, they would then go to Bullochville. One of the places benefitting from this was the Meriwether Inn. Once the automobile became popular in the early 20th century, the tourists began going elsewhere, starting the decline of the Meriwether Inn. [ [http://gastateparks.org/net/content/go.aspx?s=129854.129854 Georgia State Parks - History ] ]

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first time in Warm Springs was October 1924. He went to a resort in the town whose attraction was a permanent 88-degree natural spring, but whose main house, the Meriwether Inn, was described as "ramshackle". Roosevelt bought the resort and the convert|1700|acre|km2|sing=on farm surrounding it in 1927. It was around this time that Bullochville was renamed Warm Springs. Roosevelt traveled to the area frequently, including sixteen times while he was President of the United States, and he died in the district on April 12 1945 at his Little White House, which he had built in 1932. [Walsh, Kenneth T. "From Mount Vernon to Crawford" (Hyperion, 2005) p.96,97]

The main building of the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute is Georgia Hall, built in 1933 to replace the old Meriwether Inn, which was torn down as it was too dilapidated to successfully renovate to then-modern conditions. Roosevelt often hosted Thanksgiving dinners in its dining hall for those who were using the Springs. For much of its existence, the institute was the only such facility "exclusively devoted" to polio patients.

It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1980.

References

External links

* [http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.ga0421 Roosevelt's Little White House, Georgia Highway 85-W, Warm Springs, Meriwether County, GA: 1 photo, 1 data pages and supplemental material] , at Historic American Building Survey