Goodwood Museum and Gardens Visitor Guide, Tallahassee

The Goodwood grounds on Miccosukee Road are free and open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm and Saturday 10am to 2pm, closed Sunday, while a guided Main House tour costs $15 for an adult (Goodwood visit planning page).

Only groups of 10 or more need to register ahead at Goodwood, through 850-877-4202 ext 222; all other admissions do not need to be made in advance (Goodwood). House tours run Tuesday to Saturday only, so a Monday visit covers the gardens and grounds (Goodwood).

Goodwood is closed for tours from October 20 to October 24, 2026, and tours start again on Tuesday, October 27 (Goodwood home page). The grounds schedule on the current visit planning page is the one to check before a trip in that week.

Goodwood Museum and Gardens is at 1600 Miccosukee Road, Tallahassee, FL 32308, with its main entrance off Miccosukee Road just east of Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare (Goodwood directions).

A back entrance to the Goodwood grounds opens off Surgeons Drive, and green directional and parking signs inside the property point drivers to the right lot (Goodwood). The museum phone is (850) 877-4202 (Goodwood).

The Carriage House, Roller Rink, Visitors Center and Main House Museum at Goodwood are wheelchair accessible and have designated accessible parking (Goodwood accessibility). The museum asks visitors who need further accommodations to get in touch at least one week ahead (Goodwood).

The National Park Service record for Goodwood on the National Register still lists the location as 1500 Miccosukee Rd. in Leon County (NPS National Register record). The museum itself uses 1600 Miccosukee Road, and that is the number to put in a map app (Goodwood).

A Goodwood house tour runs 1 to 1.5 hours, covers both floors and the basement of the Main House, and shows furniture and objects that largely belonged to the house's original owners (Goodwood visit planning page).

Tours start at the Goodwood Visitor's Center, where visitors check in and pay, and a docent gives a short history before the group walks to the front porch of the house (Goodwood). The docent covers the owners and the lives of the people enslaved at Goodwood from 1832 to 1865 (Goodwood).

An elevator serves the first floor of the Goodwood Main House, but the second floor and basement are reached by stairs only. Much of the tour is spent standing, with designated seating along the route (Goodwood).

The Goodwood grounds map numbers 16 stops, among them the Main House, the Roller Rink, the Rough House and Damas Cafe, the Reflecting Pool, Jubilee Cottage, the Old Kitchen and Visitor Center, the Carriage House, the Water Tower, the Aviary and the Sunken Garden with the Old Greenhouse (Goodwood).

Goodwood began in 1834, when the Croom family of North Carolina bought 2,400 acres of the Lafayette land grant near Tallahassee and the 60 enslaved people they brought built the four antebellum buildings still standing (Goodwood history).

The State Archives of Florida gives a different year, saying Hardy Bryan Croom bought the land in 1835 (Florida Memory). The land came from an approximately 36 square mile area that the United States granted the Marquis de Lafayette in 1825 in what was then Middle Florida (Goodwood history). The museum describes the setting as the hills between the Ochlockonee and Aucilla Rivers, initially the homeland of the Apalachee and other Native American groups (Goodwood). The State Archives of Florida notes that Hardy Bryan Croom's family perished off Cape Hatteras in 1837 when the steamship Home was destroyed, and that Bryan Croom finished the house about 1840 (Florida Memory).

Arvah Hopkins bought Goodwood in 1857, and the Hopkins family grew it to 8,000 acres of non-contiguous land and enslaved over 200 people (Goodwood history); the State Archives of Florida dates the sale to Hopkins to 1856 (Florida Memory). After his death Mrs. Hopkins sold Goodwood in 1885 to Dr. William Lamb Arrowsmith, and during Elizabeth Arrowsmith's 25 years there the holdings shrank to 167 acres (Goodwood). Fanny Tiers bought the estate in 1911 and turned it from a landscape of labor into one of leisure, and Senator William C. Hodges and his wife Margaret bought it in 1925 (Goodwood).

Margaret Hodges married Thomas M. Hood in 1948, and after her death in 1978 Hood planned to restore Goodwood as a museum and green space (Goodwood). The National Park Service published the Goodwood National Register record on 6/30/1972 under NRIS number 72000334, in the Georgian style, naming George Anderson as architect (NPS). The State Archives of Florida says the house became a museum after Hood died in 1990 (Florida Memory), and the museum dates its own operation to 1996 (Goodwood memorial page). The same page says Goodwood now covers 21 acres (Goodwood).

The Goodwood Memorial to the Enslaved is a planned outdoor memorial on a half-acre site beside Miccosukee Road that will list the names of 251 people known to have been enslaved at Goodwood, with construction planned to begin in 2027 (Goodwood memorial page).

The Goodwood memorial is estimated to cost $1.5 million, and its design has been approved by the Architectural Review Board of the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation (Goodwood). The chosen site at the front of the property holds several large live oaks and a bank of azaleas (Goodwood).

The memorial page says more than 250 men, women and children were enslaved on the Goodwood land between 1832 and 1865, and that the museum leadership began reorienting its interpretation toward that history in 2021 (Goodwood). The page also counts more than 45,000 visitors to Goodwood each year (Goodwood). Until the memorial is built, the Main House tour docent covers the lives of those enslaved at Goodwood from 1832 to 1865 (Goodwood).

Goodwood's fall 2026 calendar opens with the Fall Plant Sale on Saturday, October 17, from 9am to noon, postponed from October 10 because of a hurricane (Goodwood events).

Wonderful Wednesday at the Goodwood Roller Rink on October 21, 6 to 8 PM, costs $5 and is free for members and children 15 and under (Goodwood events). Halloween Family Fun Day with WFSU on Sunday, October 25, 3 to 5 PM on the Front Lawn, is free, and Spirits of Goodwood on Friday, October 30, 6:30 to 8:30 PM, is a 21 and over evening on the Front Lawn (Goodwood events). Jingle and Mingle, a holiday night market, runs November 13 and 14 from 6 to 9 PM at the Goodwood Carriage House (Goodwood events).

One caution for planners: an older visit planning page is still online at Goodwood with a COVID mask notice and $12 general admission (older Goodwood page). The current page lists $15 for adults, so the newer page is the one to trust (Goodwood).

Last verified: October 15, 2026, against the Goodwood Museum and Gardens website, the National Park Service National Register record and the State Archives of Florida.