106 South Main Statesboro, GA 30458 ~ 912-489-8628 or 800-846-9466
e-mail ~ frontdesk@statesboroinn.com

The Historic Statesboro Inn and Restaurant is comprised of two separate side by side homes with a total of 17 guest rooms and a 2 room cottage. The original Inn, a 1905 Victorian with seven guest rooms, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Library records indicate that construction began in July 1905 with the anticipated construction costs being $3000. The Raines family, who owned a local hardware store, The W. G. Raines Hardware Company which prospered from the 1890's until the 1920s when economic depression fell upon the community, moved in in December of that year.

The home was renovated and opened as an Inn with nine guest rooms in 1985. An addition which provided a kitchen, a hundred seat banquet facility and seven additional guest rooms was added to the main building in 1991-92. The owner at that time tried to blend the architectural design with that of the original Inn.

The Brannen House which has four guest rooms, is a Victorian farm style house built in 1881. It was renovated and opened for guests in 1996.

At the rear of the property is the Hattie Holloway cabin where Georgia Music Hall of Fame member Blind Willie McTell is thought to have written "Statesboro Blues", a song made famous by the Alman Brothers.

The house is significant architecturally because if its unique turn of the century design, combining architectural features from two distinct periods, and because it stands among the largest, most impressive and most intact historic houses remaining in Statesboro, especially along south Main Street which once was lined with elegant turn-of-the-century houses.

Built in 1904, the Raines House documents the transition between the Victorian era and the Neoclassical period in Statesboro?s domestic architecture. In its overall form, the house reflects the Neoclassical preference for symmetry, balance, and relatively large, simple masses. Yet more picturesque late-Victorian influences show in the house?s multiple gables, chamfered bays, and bay windows. One of the house?s most prominent architectural features?its broad front porch?is by its very nature a Victorian element and yet by its simple balanced design and classical detailing contributes to the Classical Revival qualities of the house.

The projecting two-story gabled entrance can be seen both as a simplified picturesque Victorian feature and a rudimentary pedimented portico. The plan, if the house is similarly transitional, combining the overall symmetry of the classic four-over-four central-hall plan with Victorian bays and angled fireplaces. Exterior architectural details are relatively restrained and Neoclassical in character?simple cornice, architrave, and corner moldings, medallions and Tuscan columns?highlighted by an elaborate Palladian front entry. Interior detailing and woodwork is either Neoclassical in feeling?the fireplace mantels with their diminutive classical columns, for example, or the extensively coffered ceilings?or eclectic in character. The house was ahead of its time, featuring indoor plumbing with hot water, plaster walls and a telephone room. It was rewired for electricity before electricity was available in town.

This combination of Victorian and Neoclassical architectural features is characteristic of much of the turn-of-the-century domestic architecture in Georgia?s smaller cities and towns. It is also a characteristic of houses "designed" by builders, probably using stock architectural features, rather than by architects. It is?or was?found with some frequency in Statesboro which, although founded early in the 19^th century, achieved its greatest period of growth and development from the 1890s to the 1920s, fueled by the twin factors of railroad transportation and Sea Island cotton cultivation. At one time, Statesboro?s North and South Main Streets were lined with houses like this, some larger and more elaborate (like the John A. McDougald House, now the Beaver House Restaurant), others smaller and simpler. About half a dozen of these houses remain despite Main Street having become largely a commercial strip since the mid-20th century. Of those that remain, one is more Victorian in nature (the M. M. Holland House across the street) and the McDougald House is more Neo-classical; none better illustrates the characteristic Victorian-Neoclassical transitional house than the Raines House. Indeed, even city-wide there are only perhaps a dozen houses from any late 19^th or early 20^th century period or style that rival the size, extent, distinctive architectural feature, and both exterior and interior integrity of the Raines House. An impressive house in its day, it has become even more impressive today with the demise of so many of its contemporaries, especially along South Main Street.