The Depot | Milledgeville History | Historic Restoration

Destination Depot

The Just Imagine Cottage Pocket Exhibits

The charming pink Victorian cottage adjacent to The CSH Museum, known as the Just Imagine Cottage, is the thriving operations center for meetings, tours, and ongoing planning for The Depot renovations, programs, and events. It also houses the Native American and Frontier Georgia pocket exhibits—both snapshots of full exhibits from our former Old Capital Museum.

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The Depot Project

The Depot Then

Built in 1891, The Depot supplied food and goods to Central State Hospital and transported employees from Milledgeville daily. Over the next century, it also served as a storehouse, pharmacy, print shop, passenger waiting room, and HR offices. The renovation of the train depot is an exciting, but a challenging project when working to adapt a 133-year-old structure for modern use.

The Depot Now

With all exterior renovations complete and the west wing now housing the Central State Hospital Museum, our goal is to begin construction in the east wing. Plans for the east wing include restoring interior walls, floors, ceilings, and doors and adding modern utilities, restrooms, HVAC, lighting, and electricity. Completing this next phase of Depot renovations, will provide the heritage center with much needed gallery and event space.

The Depot's Future

The Depot will feature traditional and high technology interactive exhibits, community event space, meeting rooms, and more. The exhibits will recount the history of Baldwin County and the Oconee River Basin from 10,000 B.C. through Milledgeville's years as the state capital, the civil rights movement, and up to current region culture. The Cottage will then become a STEAM educational center.