Jekyll Square West

Jekyll Square, originally called Jekyll Place, was named for Sir Joseph Jekyll, a member of the British Parliament, friend of General Oglethorpe, and financial supporter of the Georgia colony, and the square long became a center of law, commerce, and finance in Brunswick. Brunswick grew slowly but came into its own in the 1880s as the port became a national forest export leader and businesses flourished along Newcastle Street. When Oglethorpe National Bank was chartered in 1889, it built a three-story red brick building with a cupola on Jekyll Square West. The bank failed in 1893 during a national economic crisis, leaving much of the building unused for years. In 1898, a major hurricane sent sixteen feet of storm surge into downtown Brunswick, flooding the old county courthouse and destroying valuable property records; although the former bank's cupola was blown away, the main structure remained intact. The county bought the building, repaired the cupola, and moved official business to Jekyll Square. After a new courthouse was built in 1907, the Brunswick Bank and Trust Company bought the building, and at that time it had the town's only revolving door. A 1910 streetscape of Jekyll Square showed horse and wagon traffic, trolley cars, and automobiles; by 1926 trolley service had ended and Newcastle Street was crowded with roadsters and touring cars, and by the late 1930s the city was recovering from the Great Depression. In 1958, the bank, then called American National Bank, built another facility and sold the building; soon afterward, the top two floors and cupola were removed, the arches were bricked in, and a Mansard-inspired roof was installed. The square's southeast corner also housed Floyd's Barber Shop, where Howard E. Battle served generations of Brunswick gentlemen, and later Altman's Feminine Attire, which occupied that space and several adjacent buildings. In 2008, the city of Brunswick and Signature Squares restored Jekyll Square East and West, with this square centered on a fountain made from the base bowl of the original 1885 fountain in Hanover Square, and the parks were dedicated on May 2, 2008. Brunswick itself had been laid out in 1771 according to the Oglethorpe Plan, a grid of fourteen large and small squares intended to create permanent park-like common areas, and the squares still bear their original names reflecting the city's historic ties to England.

Brunswick, Georgia · United States