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Velvet will
behind the Velvet Ropes
HISTORIC PRESERVATIONIST n DONNA BUTLER
BY CYNTHIA ADAMS PHOTOS BY NANCY EVELYN
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n a steaming Savannah morning, Donna Butler rushes around the historic Harper Fowlkes home, green eyes roving as the grand antebellum house is readied for visitors just before the clock strikes 10 a.m. These visitors are paying tourists gathering at the bottom of circular steps, who will be as warmly received as personal guests. Heel strikes echo off the gray and white Georgia marble hallway as Butler crosses the airy passageway. A staff member begins a guided tour, and Butler checks that her faithful companion, a dog named Belle, minds her Southern manners and remains politely outside on the four-columned porch.
It is a rarity that this historic property manages to actually feel like a real home. A pleasant ambiguity. Somehow, the proudly pedigreed Greek Revival house, built in 1842, does that. Not even the grandeur of a three-story stairway or an oculus at the top causes visitors to shrink back in amazement—this is a house that was occupied by a loving few who used the house as a home until it was donated to the Society of the Cincinnati, America’s oldest political organization and fraternity. (George Washington was the first president. Alexander Hamilton was the second.) “You can sit down on the sofa,” a cheerful docent urges. “Go ahead!” Film producer and actor Robert Redford was especially delighted that the house was so accessible when they used it as an important
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film set last year. Redford’s crew was respectful, staffers say, taking great care to treat the property and contents cautiously and properly. The docent, Pat Moore, helpfully adds, “It has survived over a century—and it will probably survive another.” The Harper Fowlkes House’s executive director, Donna Butler, was the very first student to receive a graduate degree in historic preservation at the University of Georgia in 1985. She even earned it during an historic year: UGA’s bicentennial. She stood out in the crowd, too. “I was the only graduate (of the new program) that year,” she says with an easy laugh. Butler, who remains involved with the University of Georgia’s historic preservation program, invites graduate students to the