Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation
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Warm Springs Historic District
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| Location | S of GA 194 and W of GA 85W, Warm Springs, Georgia |
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| Coordinates | 32°52′51″N 84°41′7″W / 32.88083°N 84.68528°WCoordinates: 32°52′51″N 84°41′7″W / 32.88083°N 84.68528°W |
| Built | 1924 |
| Architect | Henry J. Toombs, Eric Gugler, et al. |
| Architectural style | Colonial Revival |
| NRHP Reference # | 74000694 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | July 30, 1974 |
| Designated NHLD | January 16, 1980 |
Warm Springs Historic District is a historic district in Warm Springs, Georgia. It includes Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Little White House and the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation, where Roosevelt indulged in its warm springs. Other buildings in the district tend to range from the 1920s and 1930s. Much of the district looks the same as it did when Roosevelt frequented the area.
Evidence indicates that prehistoric man was the first to use the springs, and as when Roosevelt used the springs, the temperature was 89 °F (32 °C).
Residents of Savannah, Georgia, began spending vacations at Bullochville in the late 18th century as a way to escape yellow fever, finding the number of warm springs in the vicinity of Bullochville very attractive. In the 1880s and 1890s, traveling to the warm springs was attractive as a way to get away from Atlanta, and many more prosperous Southerners would vacation there. Traveling by railroad to Durand, they would then go to Bullochville. One of the places benefitting from this was the Meriwether Inn. Once the automobile became popular in the early 20th century, the tourists began going elsewhere, starting the decline of the Meriwether Inn.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt first visited Warm Springs in October 1924. He went to a resort in the town whose attraction was a permanent 88-degree natural spring, but whose main house, the Meriwether Inn, was described as "ramshackle". Roosevelt bought the resort and the 1,700-acre (6.9 km2) farm surrounding it in 1927. It was around this time that Bullochville was renamed Warm Springs. Roosevelt traveled to the area frequently, including 16 times while he was President of the United States, and he died in the district on April 12, 1945, at his Little White House, which he had built in 1932.
He founded the Institute after hearing about a boy who had regained the use of his legs, through a treatment known as hydrotherapy, which involves the use of water for soothing pains and treating diseases. The operations of the Institute were paid for by the Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which later became the March of Dimes.
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