MOBILE, Alabama - One of Mobile's oldest Mardi Gras organizations has big plans for one of the city's most historic buildings, the 1845 Protestant Children's Home near downtown.

The official owner of the 2.4-acre property is the nonprofit Historic Restoration Society, directed by David J. Cooper Sr., which purchased it for $440,000 last March and has begun a $3 million restoration of the main building and a second wing built in 1950.

After the restoration is completed, HRC will lease the former orphanage to the Infant Mystics, a Mardi Gras society founded in 1867. In its new incarnation, the property will become a meeting lodge, to be named "Cotton Hall" as a nod to the IMs' founders, said Cooper, a former president of the Mobile Carnival Association.

"The IMs were cotton merchants - traders, bankers, clerks," he said, at a time when the cotton trade was still a major economic engine in Mobile and the surrounding region.

The three-story Protestant Children's Home, at 911 Dauphin St. near the Broad Street intersection, is one of the city's last sizable historic properties available for renovation, according to Jay Roberds of NAI Mobile, who is coordinating the restoration efforts.

The orphanage's history

The home was founded as a response to the large numbers of children whose parents died in the 1839 yellow fever epidemic, and run by the Protestant Orphan Asylum Society, founded in 1840 and made up of women from various downtown churches.

The main building, designed by Henry Moffatt of Philadelphia, was constructed at a cost of $4,000, and was first occupied by 17 orphans, according to the Mobile Historic Development Commission's archives. The front landscaping had azaleas arranged in the shape of a heart.

The orphanage was renovated in late 1800s, when a wing was added; and again in 1924 and 1950, when a one-story, separate wing was built.

The property served as an orphanage until 1970, when the Alabama Baptist Children's Home took over its management and built a new home for the children in west Mobile at Grelot and Hillcrest roads.

Leo Straughn, who grew up in the Protestant Children's Home in the 1960s and 70s, said there were about 80 children living there when he and his younger siblings arrived in 1963. The boys were housed in the newer west wing.

At that time, he said, many of the children were not actually orphans, but were living there because of difficult family situations such as his own. After his parents divorced, his mother was unable to support the family, and the family court judge decided the best solution was to send Straughn and his three siblings, ages 7, 6, 5 and 4, to live in the orphanage. The Straughns saw both parents regularly while they were growing up.

"The west wing was the nice building to be in because it was newer," he remembered. The older, main building had heart pine floors built with wide boards, and rooms with 12- to 13-foot-high ceilings, he said.

The orphanage was built in a dormitory style, with large main rooms on the first two floors; 15 to 20 children slept in each room, Straughn said. Nearby was a small corner room where the house mother slept. On the second floor was another long hall with a locker room, where each child had a place to keep clothes and other belongings.

The third floor was used as a study hall on four afternoons a week. "The lady who supervised it was extremely strict," Straughn said. "You didn't make any noise in there. Looking back on it, it was obviously very good for us; you had to do well. I was fortunate that I didn't get any licks."

The elementary -school-aged children walked to the Russell School on Broad Street, but the historic school was closed in Straughn's fourth-grade year, and after that, the children attended Leinkauf Elementary.

When they reached middle school, they rode the city bus to Phillips Middle School, and if they played sports after school, they had to walk home, Straughn said. "I never thought about it being a big deal," he said of the long walk back down Dauphin Street. "I wanted to play sports, and that was just part of it."

In 1970 and 1971, when the west Mobile orphanage was being built, the children were moved to temporary housing. The boys lived in a house on Camilla Court, off of South Carlen Street and across from Murphy High School, Straughn said.

Modern times

In 1973, the Protestant Children's Home was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and the building became the location of Mobile City College. In 1985, the building housed Mobile Business College, according to the Mobile Historic Development Commission's archives.

In 1991, the building became office space for the Mobile County Department of Human Resources. Also, the second, one-story wing served as a nursing home in the 1980s and early 1990s.

In 2007, the building became a temporary living quarters for Retirement Systems of Alabama employees recruited from Eastern Europe, who stayed there while training with the company. In the last few years, though, it has been vacant.

The current restoration of the historic building isn't just for the Infant Mystics, Cooper said: It will also benefit the city by creating an attractive landmark in a formerly neglected area close to downtown.

Also, other Mobile Carnival Association mystic societies will be welcome to rent Cotton Hall for other functions, Cooper said, such as weddings, birthday parties or fundraiser galas.

"It's going to be great for the area," said Taylor Atchison, co-owner of Atchison Home, a family-owned furniture and interior design business next door on Dauphin Street. "The building definitely needed to be restored - it's very exciting from our standpoint."

"You never know what can happen to a big property like that; it can really define a neighborhood," Atchison said. "Now, we feel like it's in safe hands and we're excited about it. It's a big win for Mobile and the neighborhood."