Meetings

Crane Cottage Library

Crane Cottage, also in the Italian Renaissance architectural style, was built in 1919 for Richard Teller Crane, Jr. and his wife. The Crane family was fond of world travel, and after an extended visit to Italy the couple returned to America excited about designing a cottage on Island Jekyll to resemble a particular villa they had admired.

Chicago architects David Adler and Henry C. Dangler, engaged to design this cottage for the Crane family, understood the Cranes' desire to have the most spacious and opulent cottage on Jekyll Island. Their plans delighted Mr. and Mrs. Crane. The cottage would later be described by Adler's biographer Richard Pratt as an Italian palazzo influenced by a "villa on the Brenta River in northern Italy." According to the Architectural Record of 1924, "Crane Cottage was the most expensive and elegant winter home ever built at Jekyll."

Adler's original design for Crane Cottage featured twenty rooms, seventeen baths and an enclosed courtyard surrounded by arcaded loggias. Extending from the southern exterior of the cottage would be a brick terrace overlooking the formal garden. The landscape architect, Arthur Shurcliff, was chosen with great care. The lawns and gardens he designed in 1919 were so satisfying that many of his concepts are reflected throughout the cottage colony to this day.

A graceful reflecting pool and Italian cypress trees anchor the formal landscaping of the front lawn. The large formal sunken garden to the south of the cottage features fountains at either end, one accented with arching trellises of ivy and wisteria. Pathways, bordered by formal shrubs and flowering plants, invite a casual afternoon stroll or a romantic evening walk.

This meeting room is high speed internet ready. Service may be ordered by your sales representative. Wired and/or wireless access available.

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