Walter Rogers Furness was an American architect and real estate developer, and the eldest son of Shakespearean scholar Horace Howard Furness and Helen Kate Rogers. He attended private schools in Philadelphia and Harvard University. Like his friend and Harvard classmate, author Owen Wister, Furness traveled to the American West to hunt and fish. His uncle, Fairman Rogers, told him about plans to develop Jekyll Island as an exclusive winter hunting resort, and in 1886 Furness was the youngest of the fifty-three founding members of the Jekyll Island Club. That same year he married Helen Key Bullitt, and they had two children—Helen Kate and Fairman Rogers Furness. He worked for Furness, Evans & Company, the architectural firm founded by his uncle, Frank Furness, and was promoted to partner in 1896. A member of the Racquet Club of Philadelphia, Furness was blinded in one eye while playing rackets in 1898. The injury made it difficult to draw with precision, so he gave up architecture. It made it impossible for him to aim a rifle, so he gave up hunting. He sold his shares in the Jekyll Island Club, and allowed his membership to lapse in 1901. He inherited his Rogers grandparents' Philadelphia city house, at the southwest corner of Locust Street and Washington Square West, and demolished it to build a 1909 office building. "Repeated bouts with alcoholism brought about strained relations with his family." His wife died at age 47 in January 1914, and he died of Bright's disease a month later, following a heart attack.
Cottage
Walter Rogers Furness was listed as the Furness, Evans & Company individual-in-charge for the Jekyll Island cottage, often an indication of who within the firm was a building's primary designer. He and James W. Fassitt, a partner in the firm, visited Jekyll Island in February 1889, perhaps combining a hunting trip with selecting a building lot. Furness erected his cottage on a slightly-sloping lot amid tall trees in the isolated southern part of the club compound. The twelve-room, two-and-a-half-story cottage is slightly raised on footings. "The overhanging shingled volume of the second story is carried on slender, turned porch posts," creating a "J"-shaped covered porch beneath. The entrance is indicated by a Juliet balcony on the west façade, and the apsoidal south façade features a peak-ceilinged semicircular sleeping porch on the second story. To the east is a two-and-a-half-story section containing the dining room and kitchen, with bedrooms and servant quarters above. The unusual apsoidal-ended cottage was reminiscent of Frank Furness's apsoidal-ended University of Pennsylvania Library, a building then under construction. Walter Rogers Furness's father served as chairman of the library's building committee, and was intimately involved in its planning and detailing. The library inspired the design of Frank Furness's own apsoidal-ended country house, "Idlewild", built in the Philadelphia suburbs, just outside Media, Pennsylvania.
Later owners and occupants
Publisher Joseph Pulitzer purchased the cottage from Furness in 1896, and relocated it to his building lot at Riverview Drive and Stable Road. He lived in it through two winter "seasons" while his own twenty-six-room cottage was under construction. He then slightly moved it—about —and used it to house servants. Hydroelectric power magnate and art patron John J. Albright purchased the Pulitzer cottage in 1914, slightly moved the Furness cottage—about —and also used it to house servants. The parents of lumber executive Frank H. Goodyear, Jr. had built an Italian villa on the club compound in 1906. He inherited their villa, and was himself elected to membership in 1916. Goodyear purchased the Furness cottage from Albright in 1929. On January 21, 1930, he relocated the cottage to the northeast corner of Old Plantation and Stable Roads, a move of about a quarter-mile. He renovated the cottage, equipped it as an infirmary, and donated it to the club in memory of his mother. The Josephine Goodyear Memorial Infirmary was in operation until 1942, when the Jekyll Island Club went out of business. Georgia obtained Jekyll Island through eminent domain in 1947, and operated it as a state park for several years. The Jekyll Island Authority was created in the 1950s to conserve and develop the island. Various authority employees leased the Furness cottage as a residence, into the 1990s. An independent bookstore, Jekyll Books at the Old Infirmary, occupied the cottage from 2001 to 2016. The booksellers maintained that the cottage was haunted by the ghost of a young girl, and posted a sign on the second floor: "STOP - Only ghosts are allowed on 3rd floor stairs." Hurricane Matthew hit Jekyll Island in October 2016, and the Furness cottage was damaged by a fallen tree. Repairs and renovations to the building were completed in Summer 2017. The restorers painted the cottage the same pale blue that it had been in the 1930s and 1940s, when it served as Jekyll Island Infirmary. The nearby Jekyll Island Museum moved its visitors center and gift shop to the cottage, while its own building underwent renovations. Following nearly two years of work, the Jekyll Island Museum reopened on April 27, 2019.
