Greyfield

Greyfield is a 200-acre estate on the western side of Cumberland Island, Georgia, running from Cumberland Sound to the Atlantic Ocean. Its main house, begun in 1901 and said to be finished in 1905, was built for Margaret Carnegie Ricketson and her husband Oliver as a seasonal home. The Pittsburgh firm MacClure and Spahr designed it in a Colonial Revival style, with a full-length front porch, monumental square columns, dormers, and weatherboard front and back with stuccoed ends. Inside, heart pine floors, paneling, plaster walls, and original mantels survive. The estate also keeps a barn, four cottages, entry gates, a pergola, a pond, and the foundations of a water tower. It is one of several homes built by the Carnegie family on the island and shows how wealthy Northern industrialists used the Georgia coast for winter recreation. Descendants of the Ricketsons have kept it in family hands, and it has operated as an inn since 1962.