The 84-year-old Scout Hut is on the Community Presbyterian Church campus in Atlantic Beach. | Google
Published on April 23, 2025 at 4:11 pm
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For 87 years, a red wooden building has occupied a corner of the Community Presbyterian Church campus in Atlantic Beach, originally built by Scout Troop 37 for its weekly meetings.
But in recent years, the Scout Hut — one of the longest-standing scouting buildings in Florida — has been showing its age as it is used for Cub, Brownie and Boy Scout events.
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So local leaders and supporters will gather at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Scout Hut on Sturdivant Drive to launch a fundraiser that that seeks $250,000 by summer’s end.
The money would be used to replace the structure’s 70-year-old windows and aging wood siding to “restore it to its earlier glory” for current and future Scouts ages 6 to 16, said fundraising manager Dan Giovannucci.
“It is absolutely long in tooth — it’s been maintained to the extent that people can,” Giovannucci said. “Everybody involved in scouts is just about a volunteer, so we are able to maintain it and have it be somewhat functional, but it’s getting to the end of its useful life with the siding and things like that falling apart.”
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Mayor George Smith chartered Boy Scout Troop 37 in 1937, and its first meeting was in the Atlantic Beach Hotel Annex until the Scout Hut was built in 1938, historic records show. The troop elected to have the nearby Community Presbyterian Church manage the 1,100-square-foot wood frame building in 1943.
Known as the “Red Hut,” the building’s interior is still what Giovannucci calls “magnificent,” with many of the classic elements it was born with.
“The cathedral ceiling uses what I think is old-growth sycamore from the 1930s,” Giovannucci said. “The floor is also an interesting story since it was pulled out by a thrifty scout dad from the old Jacksonville post office in the 1920s or 1930s. That was a 19th century post office, so that old floor is now in the Scout Hut.”
A GoFundMe site was started in mid-2023 to raise money to renovate the Scout Hut.
That fundraiser raised only $5,313. So the scouts started a new fundraiser that has garnered almost $100,000 so far. They really hope to raise the total $250,000 needed for a full restoration that could start by the end of summer.
To help that, they are inviting the community to come to Thursday’s event so they can see the Red Hut.
“When we get people face to face, or they see this space and see the kind so things being done, that tends to change the motivation to do something,” he said. “We think a lot of people love the values of scouting even though it’s had some challenges over many decades. It still stands as one of the very few institutions that really takes our youth and helps grow them.”
Mayor Donna Deegan will speak at 5:30 p.m. The Rotary Club, city of Atlantic Beach and others are supporting the fundraiser.
The event will then shift to the ABBQ restaurant nearby with live music, a raffle and more. Ten percent of food and drink purchases will go to the restoration effort.
