What to See in Statesboro - Top Sights and Attractions

The Botanic Garden at Georgia Southern University is a botanical garden featuring many unique and endangered plants with many native to Georgia. The garden's main entrance is located at 1505 Bland Avenue, Statesboro, Georgia, a few blocks from the main Georgia Southern University campus.

The garden's staff offers a variety of instructional programs, events, plant sales, and workshops during the year with a focus on gardening. The garden is also used by Georgia Southern University as well as others as a place for festivals and celebrations. The garden usually provides an annual Arbor Day event offering several varieties of seedling trees to the community.

The main grounds for the Botanic Garden were willed to Georgia Southern University by the owners of the land, Dan and Catharine Bland. The garden is centered on an early 20th-century farmstead the house of which, Bland Cottage, has been renovated into a visitor's center and place for meetings. The garden has a number of specialized areas including the Heritage Garden, Rose Arbor, Children Vegetable Garden, Camellia Garden, Native Plant Landscape Garden, Native Azalea Collection, Bog Garden, and walking woodland trails.

The walking woodland trails have benches scattered about so that people can sit and rest while enjoying the birds and other wildlife that live within the gardens. On one woodland trail is the Kennedy Outdoor Classroom with a small raised stage and benches that is used for some botanical garden presentations.

Several species of birds spend time in the garden including robins, wood thrush, brown thrashers, mockingbirds, various species of sparrows, and cardinals, all native to southern Georgia. Squirrels also live on the grounds. Bees and butterflies are usually busy with the various flowers. The garden has a large number of flowering plants including camellias, azaleas, flowering quince, roses, magnolia trees, redbud trees, and others.

Dan and Catharine

Daniel "Dan" Edgar Bland was born on November 28, 1894 in Bulloch County, Georgia. He died September 20, 1985 (91 years old) and is buried in Statesboro, Georgia. Catharine O'Neal Bland was born March 19, 1897 in Hinesville, Georgia. She died August 21, 1983 (86 years old) and is buried in Statesboro, Georgia. They met at First District Agricultural and Mechanical School (which would later become Georgia Southern University) and married in 1916.

Location

Bland Cottage and the Botanic Garden at Georgia Southern University are located at 32°25′15.2″N 81°46′26.7″W.^[1]

Arena in Statesboro, Georgia. Hanner Fieldhouse is a 4,325-seat multi-purpose arena in Statesboro in the U.S. state of Georgia. It was built in 1969 and is home to the Georgia Southern University men's basketball, women's basketball and women's volleyball teams. It hosted the 1985 and 1992 Atlantic Sun Conference men's basketball tournaments.

In addition to athletic events, Hanner Fieldhouse also is home to the university's fall commencement ceremonies and featured an election rally by then-president George W. Bush in 2006. In 2007, the university held three separate ceremonies at the facility to accommodate the university's growing number of graduates. The older Hanner Gymnasium, which is part of the newer complex, hosted a Rolling Stones concert on May 4, 1965.

On July 21, 2014, the university announced that Hanner Fieldhouse was closed until further notice for construction and more information would be provided as the details became available. In October, 2014 the Fieldhouse reopened after minor renovations and held the university's 23rd-annual fall commencement.^[2]

Hotel. The Jaeckel Hotel is a historic hotel in Statesboro, Georgia that is now being used as Statesboro City Hall. It is located at 50 East Main Street.

The hotel was built in 1905 and it is three stories tall built of terra cotta block with brick veneer. The building faces Main Street, where it has a Neoclassical porch. The building was renovated sometime after 1939 when the columns were removed and shortened and the capitals were removed. The interior is details in Neoclassical style. The ceilings are pressed tin. In 1935 a three-story addition was added in the back. An elevator was added in 1939.

The hotel served as the center of local social life in the early part of the 20th century. William Jennings Bryan, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Henry Ford stayed at the hotel.

An adjacent small lot was acquired in 1910; on the rear of it a "Drummers' Building" was built of brick. It had three display rooms used by traveling salesmen ("drummers") who could stay at the hotel and store and sell their merchandise there. The merchants arrived by roadway or by the railroad.

The sidewalk in front of the hotel and the Drummers' Building is the only surviving section of hexagonal block sidewalk, from approximately the turn of the 20th century, that remains in the city.

The property, including Drummers' Building and sidewalk, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 17, 1982, as "Jaeckel Hotel".

The building is now the Statesboro City Hall. In 2016, the City Council had its twice-monthly meetings in the City Council Room on the second floor of the building. Also meeting there, on a monthly basis, were two committees, the Statesboro Planning Commission and the city's Alcohol Control Board. At least two committees, the Statesboro Beautification Commission and the Tree Committee, held their regular monthly meetings in the Drummers' Building.^[4]

The North Main Street Commercial Historic District in Statesboro, Georgia is a historic district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. It includes eight adjacent contributing buildings on the west side of the first block of North Main Street. It does not include the property at the corner of West Main and North Main, but rather is the next eight buildings going north from that, to and including the corner of Courtland Street.

The buildings are one- and two-story brick commercial buildings with shared walls. The two-story ones have pressed-metal cornices. The main architectural style is Italianate, reflected in round-arched window openings. No original storefronts are present; all have been modernized.

Statesboro was the subject of a wider survey of historic resources completed at the same time as the NRHP nomination for the district.^[5]

Building. The Dr. Madison Monroe Holland House in Statesboro, Georgia is a Queen Anne-style house which was built in 1888 and expanded in 1908. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. The listing included three contributing buildings and one contributing structure.

Queen Anne features include asymmetric massing, a turret on the front facade, a wrap-around porch and a central second-floor balcony. It has dormers with paired double-hung windows, a pressed metal mansard roof, and weatherboard siding.

It was built in 1888 as a one-story four-bedroom residence. It was expanded to add a second floor with six rooms and a balcony in 1908, allowing Dr. Holland to use the second floor as his medical office and a small hospital, and to close his separate medical office downtown. The county had no hospital at the time. He used the second floor's northeast bedroom, which includes the Queen Anne turret, as his office.

A historic barn is gone, but the property still had, in 1989, a cane boiler, a smokehouse, and a later-built but still historic automobile garage.

Statesboro was the subject of a wider survey of historic resources completed at the same time as the NRHP nomination for the district.^[6]

The James Alonzo Brannen House is a house built in 1881 in Statesboro, Georgia. It is notable as the oldest residence in the town and for its association with lawyer J. A. Brannen, for whom it was built, and who served as the town's first mayor.

The house is a single-story frame house with an L-shaped plan. Its porch, with four columns on brick piers, was added c.1917.

Brannen founded the Statesboro Eagle and Statesboro News newspapers, and he owned and developed property that is now in the West Main Street Commercial Historic District.

It has some elements of Late Victorian / Queen Anne style, such as its fish-scale shingles on the end and front gables. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1989.

Statesboro was the subject of a wider survey of historic resources completed at the same time as the NRHP nomination for the district.^[8]

The East Main Street Commercial Historic District in Statesboro, Georgia is a historic district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. It then included 16 contributing buildings: all eight buildings comprising the north side of East Main Street on the block from Siebold Street to Oak Street, and eight buildings on the south side of that block, from Oak Street returning to an alley before Siebold Street is reached.

The three-story Beaux Arts-style Bank of Statesboro building at East Main and Siebold is one of two "outstanding" buildings in the district (it is now an art gallery). It has Ionic columns at its main entrance and Corinthian pilasters on its second and third floors. The other is the Art Moderne Georgia Theatre (1936) (now named the Emma Kelly Theater).

Statesboro was the subject of a wider survey of historic resources completed at the same time as the NRHP nomination for the district.^[9]