Natchez Pilgrimage Tours is putting away the hoop skirt.

Sort of.

NPT — which is owned by the Pilgrimage Garden Club but also markets the interests of the Natchez Garden Club — is in the midst of a rebranding effort, and part of that effort includes adopting a new logo that will eventually supplant the organizations iconic image of a lady wearing a hoop skirt.

The new logo — which NPT Marketing Director Lindsey Shelton described as “more modern and sophisticated” — will be phased in starting this fall at the NPT terminals in the Natchez Visitor Reception Center.

“The logo features a window, because that is really what Natchez Pilgrimage Tours offers folks, a window to the past,” Shelton said.

Despite the changes at the Visitor Reception Center, the street signs bearing the hoop skirt logo marking houses on tour will remain in place for the time being.

“The hoop skirt is not going away forever,” Shelton said. “We’re still maintaining our trademark for it and the right to use it.”

The rebranding of NPT comes as the company works to develop new marketing strategies to attract visitors to the area’s historic showcase properties.

“In doing that, we have to keep in mind who these visitors are and what they expect,” Shelton said.

“Many folks have smartphones, and the first place they go when researching a trip is the Internet. They expect a website, an online shop and there is a younger crowd we are trying to capture.

“Overall, people are looking for that sense of authenticity. We have that in droves here in Natchez. But we have to market it in a sophisticated way that is more appealing to our current visitors. And because of those expectations, we needed a new look.”

NPT will launch a revamped website and online shop in the coming months, and long-term plans include similar web presences for PGC, Longwood and Stanton Hall.

At the same time, how the PGC properties are shown to the public will change.

Katie Wood Kirchhoff, PGC’s director and curator of historic properties, said the interpretive presentation of Stanton Hall would look at architecture and furniture as it did before, but as part of a wider story rather than purely as display pieces.

“Stanton Hall is perfectly positioned to tell how the wealth of the cotton industry manifested itself in the high-style architecture and decorative arts in Natchez,” Kirchhoff said.

“We’re thinking about the architecture and furniture being indicative about the course of economic development in the area, and we will be looking at primary sources about how people in the house — the owners and the servants — interacted with these pieces and with each other. It is something we haven’t thought about, how people lived and moved in these spaces.”

Longwood’s unfinished buildings likewise provide a view of the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction in the region, Kirchhoff said.

While the group looks for new ways to tell the old stories, Kirchhoff said it is also working to maintain the properties.

“We are trying to bring our historic properties back up to speed,” she said. “The have been maintained in the past, but some of the ways used to fix them were wrong, and we are working to correct that.”

PGC President Bridget Green said they have been aware for some time that Stanton Hall and Longwood have developed some serious structural issues.

“We recently began thinking about the most responsible ways to address those issues,” Green said. “We considered examples of historic sites that are presented and managed well – places like Monticello, Mt. Vernon, and Bayou Bend.

“These heritage tourism destinations have been mined in ways that drive economic development in their respective regions. We wanted to elevate the presentation and interpretation of Stanton Hall and Longwood, allowing Natchez visitors to have experiences that are on par with national standards. We know that good history will attract more guests to Natchez, and that is good business for everyone.”

PGC is also remodeling the gift shops at Longwood and Stanton Hall to provide them with “a more polished experience,” Kirchhoff said.

NPT can be found online at natchezpilgrimage.com.