Changes are on the way for one of Beaufort’s most iconic buildings.

The Historic Beaufort Foundation announced last week that the Verdier House, an early 19th century Federal-style mansion at the intersection of Bay and Scott streets, soon will be transformed from a house museum to a center where visitors can learn about other local historical sites and view exhibits.

“Nationally, tourist traffic at house museums is down,” said Julie Good, the foundation’s executive director. “We’re trying to get as many people through the door as possible, and we thought the house might be used best as a resource to point visitors to other historic sites and events in the community. We think it’s a good approach. We’re just trying to cover all those bases.”

The Verdier House was first opened to the public as a museum in 1976, according to the foundation’s website.

Good said visitors still can tour the mansion.

“It’s already begun to happen,” Good said. “We want to be able to point visitors to those different sites and host traveling exhibits. It’s a trial run to see how this works.”

In September, the house will host an exhibit on the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery, a militia that helped defend the city during the Revolutionary War.

In October through December, it will host “The Life and Times of Robert Smalls,” a traveling exhibit from the S.C. State Museum in Columbia, Good said.

According to the S.C. Department of Archives and History, the home was built in about 1804 by John Mark Verdier as a symbol of his rise from a merchant to a wealthy member of Beaufort’s planter class.

Following Verdier’s death in 1827, his wife, Caroline, lived in the home until the Union occupation of Beaufort in November 1861, when the mansion became the headquarters for the Union adjutant general.

The Verdier family reacquired the home in a tax sale at the end of the Civil War and owned it until 1940, when it was condemned and scheduled for demolition so a gas station could be built on the site, state records show.

A group of Beaufort citizens formed what is now the Historic Beaufort Foundation to purchase and restore the home, saving it from the wrecking ball.

The Verdier House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in August 1971.

Meanwhile, work continues to restore an early 20th century building behind the Verdier House that soon will become the foundation’s main office.

Good said the organization expects to move into the building within the next three months.

“We didn’t quite know the … condition of that building,” Good said. “We’re still rehabbing that building. Two of the walls were beyond repair, but the walls are up and the windows are in. We hope to have an open house once the building is stable enough for people to come in and see the work that’s being done.”