Sport shooting in South Georgia dates to the late 1800s, when Northerners, attracted by large tracts of open space and warmer winter weather, started traveling to the area and building gracious estates around the pursuit of quail hunting. Creating a new estate with timeless style on undeveloped land in Albany, Georgia, that connected to that history was our challenge in designing this expansive property of timber stands, farmland, grassy fields, and slow-moving streams.

For the Greek Revival main house, we used a five-part Palladian composition with a center block and flanking wings to establish a stately presence on the land belying its modest size. The main block, accented by a central portico and an elegant cornice, contains the gathering spaces — living room, dining room, library, and gun room — while one wing contains the primary bedroom suite and an office, and the other houses the kitchen, butler’s pantry, and other service spaces.

Lending a touch of age to the interiors, antique chip-carved mantels are featured in the living room, dining room, and library. Floors are locally sourced, reclaimed longleaf yellow pine, hand-scraped to preserve their character. We used that same honey-colored wood for the cabinets and paneling at the gun room, right inside the front door, where hunters leave their gear and muddy boots when they return from a shoot.

From rocking chairs on the rear porch, visitors are provided a view across a man-made lake toward a pasture where horses are put out to graze in front of new stables. On the entry side of the house, we planted an allée of live oaks leading to the front door, which have matured into a full canopy that covers the driveway. Minimal but symmetrical foundation plantings of hollies, boxwoods, and magnolias that accentuate the formality of the architecture give way to a looser palette of plant material as the landscape extends away from the house, ultimately leading to land that is left in a wild state that is the ideal quail habitat. Dirt paths wind through the entirety of the property, tracing the paths of shooting circuits that all share the same halfway point, where lunch is served on all-day shoots — an antique cabin sited in a clearing at the edge of a creek that we moved, renovated, and restored.

Interiors: Owner
Builder: Gary Cooper and Sons
Photographer: Tim Lenz
Stylist: Phillipa Brathwaite