Slideshow: Georgia to rehab Ossabaw mansion

June 12, 2024, 12:30 p.m.: Corrections: This story has been updated to reflect a corrected number of bathrooms in the Torrey West house as well as the official name of the Ossabaw Island Project and a list of its alumni.

Georgia is planning to rehab the nearly century-old Ossabaw Island mansion that was the family home of Eleanor “Sandy” Torrey West, who sold the island to the state to save it from development.

West’s grandson, Beryl Gilothwest, serves on the board of the nonprofit Ossabaw Island Foundation, which manages visits to the island. He calls the pink stucco mansion the “heart of the island.”

“It’s the place where you start out from to explore this absolutely extraordinary environment and charged landscape,” he said.

Slideshow: See inside the Torrey West house

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources 2024-2025 budget includes $7 million for the rehabilitation of the historic Torrey West House and several associated buildings on Ossabaw, a state heritage preserve in Chatham County.

Georgia has owned the island since 1978 when West and her family sold it to the state for $8 million, half its assessed value. West’s deal with Georgia limited the uses of the 26,000-acre barrier island to natural, scientific, and cultural study, research, and education, and environmentally sound preservation, conservation, and management of the island’s ecosystem.

She retained tenancy of the buildings until her death, living on the island and in the house until age 103. West died in Savannah in 2021 on her 108th birthday.

Last year 904 day trippers 1,306 overnight visitors experienced the island through the foundation’s programs.

Gilothwest, who lives in Brooklyn, is the deputy director of research and exhibitions for the Calder Foundation. He recalled exploring the Spanish Revival-style mansion as a child.

“I think it’s a completely magical house,” he said. “It’s so expansive, and has so many different secret corners in it. As a little kid running around in there, I feel like every time I came to visit, I would discover a new closet, or a new secret passageway or something.”

Along with the main house, the Little Torrey House, the garage/studio, both located nearby, will be rehabbed. All three are contributing structures in the Ossabaw Island Historic District listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Ossabaw Island Foundation, which first proposed the project in unsuccessful bids for state grants, expects the renovations to double its capacity to facilitate island stays to a maximum of about 60 overnight visitors at a time. It will also provide new meeting space and work space for those groups. The Little Torrey house, for example is a 2,000-square- foot house built for Sandy West’s brother, Bill Torrey. Its 800-square-foot terrazzo-floored living room will provide much needed classroom or work space for a variety of island visitors, from archeologists to artists.

The rehab is not meant to be a complete renovation of the Torrey West home, which boasts 15 bedrooms and 16 bathrooms. The state and Ossabaw Island Foundation instead are taking what the foundation’s Executive Director Elizabeth DuBose calls a “light touch.” They’re saving what they can and leaving some costly items like balcony repair and antique tile flooring restoration for another day.

“The $7.1 million will make it a safe, habitable place people can come and do what they’re supposed to do on Ossabaw,” DuBose said. The foundation tackled one big piece of the rehab more than 20 years ago, restoring the Ludowici terracotta roof tiles at a cost of $300,000.

Gilothwest agreed.

“The important thing is that this house and its restoration is going to vastly increase the capabilities of the Ossabaw Island Foundation, and the various ways that it is able to share Ossabaw and offer opportunities for all sorts of different people to come and experience the unique depths that the island offers, while simultaneously preserving an important aspect of the history of Georgia and the Sea Islands.”

The last 100 years of Ossabaw’s history are interwoven with that of the Torrey West family. West’s father and mother, the latter heir to the Pittsburgh Plate Glass fortune, bought the island in 1924 and built the house two years later as a winter retreat from their Michigan home. Sandy West grew to love the island and as an adult became a patron of artists and scientists she’d invite to spend time there.

Among the alumni of the Ossabaw Island Project she established with her husband Clifford West were writers Annie Dillard, Olive Ann Burns, Margaret Atwood, T.C. Boyle, and Rosemary Daniell; poets Edwin Honig and David Hamilton; composer Samuel Barber; ecologist Eugene Odum; and art historian H. W. Janson.  

“It was a family house, but every time I visited there, there were always other people there, too,” Gilothwest said. “And she had invited or had met or created some sort of a connection to, and really wanted them to experience Ossabaw. So I’ve always thought about it in that way.”

The Department of Natural Resources Engineering and Construction Division will lead the project. On-island work is expected to begin in late fall 2024 and is projected to take at least two years. DuBose is an advisor on the project.

The foundation bought all of the furniture and household objects from the Torrey West family. Furnishing the rehabilitated buildings will be the foundation responsibility, and will include the original Torrey West family items

“In a certain sense, I definitely think of it as my grandmother’s house, having had the opportunity to grow up there. ” Gilothwest said. “But you know, it’s also always been the state of Georgia’s house.”