Bethesda Orphan House and Academy was founded in 1740 by the Great Awakening preacher George Whitefield on a grant of five hundred acres between William Stephens’s Beaulieu Plantation and Noble Jones’s Wormsloe Plantation (18.1), south-east of Savannah on the banks of the Vernon River. Whitefield founded Bethesda in conjunction with James Habersham Sr. as a home for orphaned, abandoned, and needy children in keeping with the charitable spirit of the newly founded Georgia colony. It is the oldest extant charity in North America. Fire destroyed the original Orphan House designed by Whitefield in 1773, and the institution was reestablished as the Bethesda Home for Boys following the American Revolution. In 2011, the school re-branded itself as Bethesda Academy. The existing main building has two wings that date from the 1883. Bethesda Canopy Road with its allée of trees between Whitefield and Ferguson avenues was planted in the late eighteenth century and led straight to the entrance gate; the tree-lined road, while visible from Ferguson Avenue, is however no longer fully accessible and has been damaged by development and road widenings crossing its path.