The Nail House was a small parking garage located behind Main House where the O’Connors would park their car and store small tools and hardware, hence the name “Nail House.” It was a single-story structure with three bays, a shingled roof, and a dirt floor. In the 1950s and 60s, Flannery had pens and runs for her many domestic birds extending from the east side of Nail House. Here she raised chickens, geese, ducks, and swans, not to mention her favorite kind of bird, the peafowl. It was in 1952 that Flannery placed her first order for a pair of three-year-old peafowl and four peachicks from a breeder in Eustis, Florida. Eventually, Flannery would have a flock of up to forty peafowl here at Andalusia.
The Nail House collapsed in the early 2000s and was deconstructed by the Flannery O’Connor – Andalusia Foundation in 2015.
(Flannery O’Connor – Andalusia Foundation, Inc. , Robert Mann)
In 2016, a Little Free Library was erected near the site where the Nail House once stood. A part of the Flannery O’Connor Book Trail, it is a replica of the Nail House and still stands there to this day where visitors can take or leave books for those who follow.
Plans are currently in place to reconstruct the Nail House on its original site.
by Robert Mann 
Andalusia Web Tour 