Savannah A to Z

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Welcome to Savannah A to Z, a compilation of people, places and things to know if you’re learning about the area or just pondering what you should be sure to tell guests when showing off your city.

As the ABCs are building blocks for our language, we hope these entries are helpful when you try to describe our uniquely beautiful and quirky city.

Nominations for letters came from readers and others via social media and savannahnow.com and we’ve assembled them for you to discover and discuss.

You’ll find trivia you can share about each of them, thanks to veteran writer and local beer blogger Chuck Mobley and news archivist Julia Muller. Savannah Morning News chief photographer Steve Bisson assembled the images and commercial content manager Christopher Sweat pulled it all together in a book for you to keep and share.

We hope you’ll enjoy the descriptions and debate the entries for some time to come.

Thank you for reading, Susan Catron Executive Editor Savannah Morning News/savannahnow.com

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Azalea A is for the azalea, Savannah’s multihued harbinger of spring that decorates streets and squares throughout the city, a Southern floral spectacle that charms long-time residents and first-time visitors.

The Indica azalea is native to Japan.

It was first grown in the South in the 1840s, according to Southern Living magazine, in Charleston, at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens on the Ashley River.

among the Best U.S. Cities With Free Attractions. “People who are seeking that special Southern ambiance will enjoy spending time in some of the 22 public squares or wandering down the tree-lined avenues,” Mother Nature’s website says.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; www. southernliving.com; www.mnn.com.

That said, Savannah’s current azalea display doesn’t take a back seat to that of our sister colonial city, or anyone else’s.

Recommended locations to check out include Forsyth Park, any of the squares, particularly Johnson, Telfair, Madison and Chippewa, the medians of Oglethorpe Avenue and Liberty and Abercorn streets, Colonial, Laurel Grove and Bonaventure cemeteries, and Wormsloe Historic Site and Bluff Drive on the Isle of Hope.

The easy accessibility of these sites has won Savannah recognition on the Mother Nature Network where it’s listed

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Bonaventure Cemetery

B is for Bonaventure Cemetery, the majestic, moss-lined paean to the past on Savannah’s eastside that has beguiled generations of visitors and beckoned legions of artisans who have endeavored to expand and explain its eternal appeal.

Its history dates back to colonial Georgia. Then a plantation, it was the property of John Mullryne, who put aside a small plot as a family burial ground. In 1802, Harriet Fenwick Tattnall, the wife of Mullryne’s grandson, was interred in the plot, the first adult burial at Bonaventure.

the rural cemetery style, a mid-19th century movement to position park-like cemeteries on the outskirts of cities and towns.

Enchanted by the stately, shadowy, avenues of oak trees that had been planted many years before by the Mullryne and Tattnall families, Rion made them the centerpiece of his plan.

Rion labeled the oaks “living colonnades” and noted their “magnificent drapery of moss which hangs in all possible forms.”

By 1846, when the Tattnall family sold Bonaventure for $5,000 to Savannah businessman Peter Wiltberger, the family plot also held the remains of Harriet’s husband and six of their nine children.

Wiltberger agreed to maintain the sanctity of that small piece of land, and in 1847 he made it part of the 70 acres he set aside as the Evergreen Cemetery of Bonaventure.

In 1849, Wiltberger hired James Rion, a young Savannah man who was attending the University of South Carolina, to design Bonaventure in 9

In 1869, the cemetery expanded to 140 acres, its size when the City of Savannah bought the property in 1907 for $30,000.

In 1909-1910, another 20 acres, which were dedicated as a Jewish section, were added.

“The rippling of living waters, the song of birds, the joyous confidence of flowers, the undisturbable grandeur of the oaks, mark this place of graves as one of the Lord’s most favored abodes of life and light.”

of her 1889 death from pneumonia, and Walz’ lifelike rendering of her youth and innocence, have long made Gracie the most popular attraction at Bonaventure.

Antonio Aliffi, another sculptor with many notable works, was an Italian native who came to the United States at the invitation of Walz. In addition to his creations at Bonaventure, Allifi played a role in the famed carvings at Stone Mountain and Mount Rushmore.

— John Muir

Over these years, Bonaventure became the very model of a rural cemetery.

Naturalist John Muir spent several nights sleeping in its soft bushes, Union officers wrote home about visits to its picturesque lanes, and many of Savannah’s most prominent names chose its scenic solemnity as their final resting places.

The bodies of original Georgia settler Noble Jones and first governor of the state Edward Telfair were reinterred in family plots at Bonaventure. The Lawtons, Mercers and Jacksons decided to make their burials there as well.

This growth in prominence and prestige brought art and architecture to Bonaventure. Marble statues, mausoleums, stone tablets and iron fences and gates rose along the sandy lanes, funerary masterpieces sculpted, forged and designed by a cadre of talented craftsmen.

The name most associated with Bonaventure’s sculpture gallery is that of John Walz, a German native who fashioned some 100 pieces at the cemetery. His most admired work is Gracie Watson, a 6-year-old girl who has held generations of visitors in the palm of her little marble hand. The tragic story

There are also 25 historic mausoleums at Bonaventure, most of them built before the 1930s. Their architects include Henry Urban, who designed the spires of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist after an 1889 fire, and Henrik Wallin, who drew up the General Oglethorpe Hotel on Wilmington Island and the old City Auditorium.

It was this Bonaventure, venerable and verdant, that John Berendt visited when researching and writing “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” His 1994 best-seller has since inextricably linked its characters with the city and the cemetery.

But, ironically, Bonaventure does not play a major role in the actual book.

It was the late Jack Leigh’s haunting photograph of the Bird Girl on the cover of the book, a heretofore littleknown piece of statuary, which cemented the relationship.

In the 20 or so years since “Midnight” became a publishing phenomenon, there have been a lot of changes at Bonaventure. The Bird Girl, who became a magnet for intrusive visitors, has been moved to the Telfair Museum of Art. Little Gracie is now protected from prying hands by an iron fence.

Tours and tour buses are controlled by city regulations.

The cemetery also gets a lot of attention online. CNN Travel lists it among the world’s 10 most beautiful cemeteries; Smithsonian Magazine gives it a plug on its website; and a YouTube search for “Bonaventure Cemetery” turns up 3,130 results.

But, even with all that, when you walk or slowly ride down its sun-dappled lanes, its essential essence remains.

The magnificent trees that James Rion described so eloquently in 1850 still stand sentinel, and the words that John Muir wrote in 1867 still ring true: “The rippling of living waters, the song of birds, the joyous confidence of flowers, the undisturbable grandeur of the oaks, mark this place of graves as one of the Lord’s most favored abodes of life and light.”

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” by John Berendt; “A ThousandMile Walk to the Gulf,” by John Muir; www.youtube.com; www.cnn.com; www.bonaventurehistorical.org; www.smithsonianmag.com; National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for Bonaventure Cemetery.

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Cathedral

of St. John the Baptist C is for the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, whose spectacular twin French Gothic spires have gracefully stretched toward heaven since 1896.

Generations of Savannah Catholics have sat and kneeled in its spacious nave to take communion, witness weddings, say goodbye to loved ones and celebrate Mass on St. Patrick’s Day.

The Catholic Champion Blog, which describes itself as “where tradition meets the blogosphere,” also has high praise for the Cathedral, its features and its weekly Latin Mass, which it found reminiscent of a classic European setting. “There are few Catholic churches in the southern United States that can compete with this cathedral in size and beauty,” the site states.

Its many dramatic, spiritual features — including 81 stained-glass windows, pipe organ with 34 ranks and 2,308 pipes and contemplative century-old murals — have made it a must-stop destination for local tour companies, and put it high atop national and international rankings of landmarks.

The online magazine Architecture and Design placed the Cathedral at number 11 on its 2014 lineup of the 25 Most Popular Tourist Attractions, between the New York Public Library and the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis in St. Louis. TripAdvisor, which bills itself as the world’s largest travel site, listed the Cathedral at number 9 on its 2014 edition of the Top 25 Landmarks in the United States.

And, for those who prefer a less secular tone to tourism, the Cathedral is one of the recommended destinations on the online Religious Travel Planning Guide.

All this current attention and fanfare is somewhat ironic, considering that Catholics were banned from Savannah from its settlement in 1733 until the 13

American Revolution in 1777, when a new state constitution allowed them limited rights. The ensuing service and sacrifice of Catholic soldiers, particularly Count Casimir Pulaski during the 1779 Siege of Savannah, helped its adherents finally win equal rights under Georgia law in 1789.

Communicants of the city’s first Catholic church, called Saint John the Baptist and constructed on Montgomery Street circa 1799-1800, were primarily French, fleeing revolutions in their native homeland and in Haiti. The congregation, which had gradually become predominately Irish and German, grew slowly until 1850, when Pope Pius IX established the Diocese of Savannah. St. John the Baptist Church was enlarged and called the Cathedral.

In the 1870s, the diocese took a dramatic step forward with the construction of a bold, new cathedral. The land was purchased in 1870; the cornerstone was laid in 1873; and the building was dedicated in 1876.

The finishing touches, the 207-foot-high steeples that rise far above Lafayette Square, were completed in 1896.

But, almost before the city and the congregation could celebrate this godly accomplishment, disaster struck: an 1898 conflagration destroyed everything except the outside walls, the spires and the steeples.

Dazed but undaunted, the congregation immediately set to reestablish this tangible connection to its faith. On Dec. 24, 1899, the first mass was held in the

rebuilt cathedral. It took several more years to finish the redecoration of the interior, a process that came to an end in 1912 when the expansive, expressive murals, which were planned and directed by Savannah artist Christopher P.H. Murphy, were carefully put in place.

This edition of the Cathedral towered over the nearby childhood home of Flannery O’Connor. Now considered one of the most important American writers of the 20th century, O’Connor lived in a devoutly Catholic household at 207 E. Charlton St., directly across Lafayette Square from the Cathedral.

The house is now a museum, carefully restored to represent the years from 1925, when O’Connor was born, to 1938, when she and her parents moved to Atlanta.

Over the next several decades, as the congregation grew, major updates were made to the Cathedral, including a new entry plaza, new pulpit, new altar rail and repairs to the shifting spires.

But, all that paled in comparison to the celebration planned to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the rededication of the Cathedral and the 150th anniversary of the diocese.

Begun in September of 1998 and completed in November of 2000, the $11 million project stacked scaffolding up 14 decks to the roof line and 31 decks to the steeple tops. Inside, as part of a redecoration crusade, the 24 circa-1912 murals were restored to their original glory and the Stations of the Cross were returned to their original polychromatic tones.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; Website of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist; Catholic Champion blogspot; www. architecturedesign.net; www.tripadvisor.com.

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Daffin

Park

D is for Daffin Park, the distinguished and distinctive 80-acre playground that has provided a myriad of recreational opportunities for Savannah residents since 1907. It was named for Philip D. Daffin, a Confederate veteran, businessman and early environmental advocate who served as chairman of the Park and Tree Commission from 1898 until his death in 1929. It was designed

by John Nolen, a prominent champion of comprehensive city planning, who put together hundreds of urban blueprints for communities from coast-to-coast, including another Georgia landmark, Weracoba Park in Columbus.

Nolen’s original layout for Daffin Park was a beauty of symmetry, with two circular nodes that were linked to the park’s four corners by tree-lined diagonal roads. However, the city built Municipal Stadium at the east end of the park in 1927, interrupting Nolen’s easy flow, but adding an edifice that has earned an esteemed place in local baseball history.

On Nov. 18, 1933, as part of the state’s bicentennial celebration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to a crowd of 40,000 at Municipal Stadium. Then in the first year of his presidency, FDR commented on the United States’ recent

formal recognition of Russia, and on his New Deal plans to pull the country out of the Great Depression.

Almost seven years later, on Aug. 11, 1940, Municipal Stadium was destroyed by a Category 1 hurricane that made landfall in nearby Beaufort and sent 73 mph winds through Savannah. The stadium was rebuilt, at a cost of $150,000, half of which came from the coffers of the WPA. It was renamed in honor of city Alderman William Grayson, who led the effort to reconstruct it.

As Grayson Stadium, it is now the oldest operating minor league ball park in the country, and is a landmark for teams and fans. It’s been home for affiliates of 17

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; Historic Savannah Foundation Website; Savannah Sports Council; Digital Library of Georgia; savannahbest.com; nws.noaa.gov; library.armstrong.edu; Baseball Buddha blog; National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for Daffin Park-Parkside Historic District.

the Cincinnati Reds, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Dodgers and Texas Rangers. It’s also hosted exhibition games for major league teams, and Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson and other notable stars have stood in its batter’s box.

Outside Grayson’s walls, the park has undergone many other changes, some subtle, some substantial.

The lake that borders Victory Drive was originally in the shape of the 48contiguous United States. The sides have since been smoothed out, but it remains a popular spot.

The path, an immensely popular feature, is certainly in keeping with Nolen’s plan of Daffin being a multi-use, multiattraction magnet for families. Along with Grayson Stadium, Daffin boasts a public pool, playground, facilities for soccer, rugby or football, tennis courts, the aforementioned lake with its two fountains and a gazebo which can be rented for social gathering and cookouts.

The Herty Pines Dog Park, which opened on the Bee Road side in 2012, has quickly become a popular destination for local families and their canines.

Fittingly, much of this activity occurs under and around the park’s massive, mossy sentinels, the oak trees that Nolen carefully placed more than a century ago. In all, 156 oak trees, at a cost of $4 apiece, were shipped from Ossabaw Island and planted at Daffin.

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Ellis

Square

E is for Ellis Square, an element of Gen. James Oglethorpe’s original 1733 city design that has survived devastating fires and poor municipal planning to rise like a phoenix as a unique public space that is both a destination and a connection.

It was named for Henry Ellis (17211806), the second royal governor of the colony.

In its early years, it was an open space.

Nearby residents gathered there to socialize and participate in military drills. Many of Savannah’s first Jewish families chose to live in the area, and a house on the square served as a synagogue until the early 1740s.

the Georgia General Assembly allowed a market to sell meat, fruit, vegetables and other goods after sunrise, except on Sunday.

That first market was leveled by a fire in 1788. A second market, built in 1811, was torched by the great fire of Jan. 11, 1820.

An illegal cache of gunpowder, stored in the market, exploded and enlarged the fire’s path. When it was over, the city had lost 463 buildings and two-thirds of its residents were without homes.

A third city market, constructed in 1821, stood until 1870, when it was torn down.

The fourth, and final, city market opened in 1872, and served a wide socioeconomic swath of merchants, vendors and customers for more than 80 years.

But the search for parking places, seemingly an unsolvable problem in Savannah, doomed the venerable landmark.

In 1953, the city approved a 50-year lease for the property to a company which planned to convert Ellis Square to a 200-space garage.

The character of the square changed in 1763, when the city market was moved there from Wright Square. A 1755 act by

The decision was a stinging defeat for Savannah’s fledgling preservation movement. Its adherents decided to bid adieu to the old market with a party, the

Beaux Arts Ball. Held on Oct. 31, 1953, it was sponsored by the Savannah Art Club squeezed in some 700 costumed participants, sparking stories in Life Magazine and the New York Times.

It did not, however, save the market. The building was razed in early 1954, and replaced by the Park & Shop Garage.

legendary Savannah songwriter Johnny Mercer.

The project also restored the visual and historical connections between the square, its facing streets and surrounding buildings.

Still, it’s important to remember that the loss of the market inspired local preservationists and led directly to the rescue of the Davenport House and the establishment of the Historic Savannah Foundation in 1955.

And, the passage of few years amply illustrated that garage was an indisputable ugly structure in a city that prided itself on its beauty. Longtime Savannah Morning News columnist Tom Coffey, in 1986, labeled it a “monstrosity.” A few years later, historian Dr. Preston Russell tossed out an apt analogy when he styled it “a thumb in the city’s eye.”

However, complaints about the aesthetics aside, there was little that could be done about the garage, other than plan for 2004, when the lease expired.

Fittingly, the most popular proposal called for returning the square to a green space and placing the parking underground. Historic Savannah Foundation, in 1998, and the Savannah Morning News, in 2002, made that recommendation, which became a reality, although it took several years.

The unlamented garage was removed in 2005, and four levels of underground parking, encompassing some 1,065 places, were constructed. Reopened in 2010, Ellis Square now contains, among other features, a visitor center, space for performances, several oak trees, a fountain and a life-size statue of

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; Website of Congress for the New Urbanism; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; www. savannahga.gov.

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Forsyth

Park

F is for the the heart and soul of Savannah, Forsyth Park, which has entertained generations of visitors, tourists and Savannah residents.

Its calm and cool green spaces have lent solace to those seeking respite from the conflicts that its monuments honor, and its languid vista up Bull Street has slowly shifted from that of a small, sandy Southern town to that of a dashing, yet still dignified, international destination.

Late 1840s: William Brown Hodgson, the scholarly husband of Margaret Telfair, placed a fence around a stretch of pine forest at the edge of the city to save it from development. The park, at that early stage, was named for Hodgson.

The heavily-wooded area was divided by a ditch which ran from East Broad Street to West Broad Street. A bridge, part of White Bluff Road, crossed the ditch.

The name of the park, at Hodgson’s suggestion, was changed to honor John Forsyth, who served as the governor of Georgia, minister to Spain, secretary of state and as a U.S. congressman and senator.

1851: The city decided to place an iron fence around the original 10 acres. The fence was deemed necessary to keep

grazing cattle out of the park, and its price was not to exceed $10,000.

1858: The centerpiece of Forsyth Park, its iconic fountain, was installed. Inspired by the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace in London, it was manufactured by Janes, Beebe & Company of New York and cost $3,000. (Near identical fountains also stand in Cuzco, Peru; Madison, Ind.; and Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)

1867: An ordinance to make the traditional parade-ground portion of Forsyth, the 20 acres south of the fountain, an official part of the park passed. This, however, was far from the final word on what was often called the Park Extension as city officials and local militia commanders sparred over its ownership for decades.

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Early 1870s: Two sphinxes were placed at the Bull Street entrance of the park.

1873: A metal statue of Mercury, with wings on his helmet and feet, was given to the city by William A. Thomas, and stationed near the fountain.

1879: Years of work and dedication by the ladies of the Savannah Memorial Association finally came to fruition when the 50-foot-high Confederate Monument, one of the first in the South, was completed. Its crowning touch, a life-sized statue of an armed Confederate soldier facing north, was paid for by George W.J. DeRenne.

1892: Some 100 azalea bushes and 22 palmetto trees were planted in the park.

1896: The old iron fence, which had enclosed the original 10 acres for some 40 years, was removed. New cattle laws, which prohibited grazing in the park, made the fence obsolete.

Sept. 29, 1896: A hurricane struck the city and leveled 319 trees at Forsyth, many of them pine trees.

1897: A number of large oak and magnolia trees were planted to replace the devastated pine population.

1898: Savannah in general, and Forsyth Park in particular, played leading roles in the Spanish-American War. The port served as major point of embarkation, and the park and its nearby environs served as an encampment for some 13,000 soldiers. President William McKinley was among the crowd of some 16,000 who witnessed a grand review of the soldiers in the Park Extension on Dec. 6.

1899: The sphinxes, severely damaged by storms, were removed, but, after popular outcry, were reworked and then reinstalled. Several years later, however, they were damaged beyond repair by mischievous youths wielding, in the words of a Savannah Morning News article, “cannon-crackers.�

1910: Two small busts of generals Lafayette McLaws and Francis Bartow were moved from Chippewa Square to Forsyth, where they were placed in close proximity to the Confederate Monument.

1973: Vandals demolished the fountain’s tritons. The pieces were taken to Savannah sculptor Ivan Bailey who repaired and reconstructed them.

1914: The metal statue of Mercury was damaged beyond repair by what the Savannah Evening Press described as a “horde of young Americans.” The gang “ran him down, bowled him over, and scattered the broken pieces to the winds.”

1912-15: Two dummy forts were built on the sides of the park for use by local militia units who drilled and practiced at the extension.

1922: A January sleet storm hammered Forsyth. The weight of the ice caused limb after limb to snap. “Hour after hour the sound of crashing branches could be heard,” according to a Savannah Morning News article.

1931: The Spanish-American War Monument at the south end of the park was dedicated. Called “The Hiker,” the monument is one of 50 or so copies of a work by Theodora Alice Ruggles Kitson that are scattered at parks and cemeteries across the country.

November of 1945: The fountain, which was turned off during World War II, was returned to its usual visual glory for four afternoons a week, including Sundays.

1963: The Fragrant Garden for the Blind was crafted from the dummy fort on the Whitaker Street side of the park.

Its entrance gate was once part of old Union Station, torn down that same year to make way for Interstate 16.

1974: The fountain served as a backdrop for the opening scenes of a car chase in a Burt Reynolds movie, “The Longest Yard.” (Other movies filmed inside Forsyth Park include the original “Cape Fear,” “Forrest Gump,” “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” and “The Judas Project.”)

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1977: Ivan Bailey again came to the rescue, this time after a February ice storm damaged the statue atop the fountain. Bailey took the pieces back to his foundry and, using old photographs as reference points, painstakingly made the necessary repairs.

The north end of the park, the original section, covers approximately 10 acres.

The southern end, which for many years served as a military parade ground, encompasses about 20 acres.

May of 1988: The fountain, 130 years old and badly in need of restoration and repair, was taken apart and trucked to Robinson Iron Co. of Alexander City, Ala. “I’m relieved that we’re getting it down before it fell down,” said Don Gardner of the park and tree department.

August of 1988: As the landmark was being put back in place, another contretemps captured the city’s attention as officials were forced to admit that the statue atop the restored fountain was not the original but a composite. The 1858 original was zinc: The new one was aluminum and painted with polyurethane. Still, it likely would not have been noticed except for a subtle difference in the position of its left hand.

1995: The Sidewalk Arts Festival, started in 1981 by the Savannah College of Art and Design, shifted to Forsyth Park and its lengthy stretches of sidewalk.

May of 2004 to February of 2010: In a project that took years and $4.7 million to complete, the dilapidated dummy fort

on the Drayton Street side was reborn as the Forsyth Park Café, a multi-use facility with a café, visitors’ center and band shell.

2005: The city undertook a restoration project on the Confederate Monument.

Its sandstone surfaces and bronze statue, damaged by age and weather, needed extensive treatment.

November of 2010: Forsyth was dedicated as an arboretum, a living museum of 52 species of trees.

Ironically, none were pines, the trees that William Brown Hodgson had set out to protect some 160 years earlier.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; City of Savannah Research Library & Municipal Archives; gogardennow.blogspot.com; www. historicsavannahparks.com.

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Ghosts G is for Ghosts, and their persistent presence, whether you believe in them or not, has become a part of not just Savannah lore, but of Savannah history.

In recent years, the city has become a major destination for travelers looking for history with a little spirit. USA Today labels it as one of America’s 10 Most Haunted Cities; The Travel Channel likewise puts Savannah on its Top Haunted Cities List; and CNBC places Savannah at the very top of its 10 Most Haunted Cities in America countdown.

“Savannah may look like a sweet Southern belle, but she keeps a dark secret,” USA Today gushes in its piece on haunted destinations. “Over the years, bloody buildings, massive fires, yellowfever epidemics and hurricanes have taken hundreds of lives, leaving behind unsettled spirits.”

All this helps attract the hundreds of tourists who daily walk and ride, in a hearse if they chose, through the city on ghost tours.

The most popular destinations include some of the city’s most historic addresses—the Andrew Low House, the Isaiah Davenport House and the SorrelWeed House. Other can’t-miss haunted-

historic destinations include Colonial Cemetery, the Kehoe House and Moon River Brewing Co. But Savannah’s ghostly past started long before this recent paranormal phenomenon.

One of the earliest such tales was spun by a most unlikely source, Charles C. Jones Jr. A member of an influential and wealthy Liberty County family, Jones was a prominent attorney, a mayor of Savannah, a Confederate artillery officer and Lost Cause spokesman who also wrote extensively on Georgia’s colonial history and the South’s rich Indian heritage.

His ghost story has impeccable credentials: It was published by the 29

Georgia Historical Society. Writing to a Savannah friend in 1876, Jones relayed an experience that he said occurred in 1857, when he was living at a longsince-demolished house on State Street.

Seated, and studying, in the dining room of what he thought was an empty house, Jones heard someone enter.

“Judge of my surprise,” he wrote, “when I beheld a woman—an utter stranger to me—pausing on the threshold.” She was “pale of countenance, thin-visaged, and emaciated in figure,” Jones wrote.

recollections conjured up by the circa1796 Hampton-Lillibridge House. Jim Williams, of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” fame, purchased the house in 1963 with plans to restore it.

First, he moved it several blocks, from 312 Bryant St. to 507 E. Julian St., its present location. In December of 1963,

After he recovered from his shock, Jones said he followed the woman into the parlor, looked around and “saw no one.”

An extensive search also yielded no results. He described the incident to a female acquaintance the next morning, and she told him the description exactly fit “Miss Jane,” the deceased owner of the house, which was at center of a contentious court case.

after a series of disturbing events at the house, Williams arranged to have it exorcised by an Episcopal bishop.

Soon afterward, Jones wrote, the case was decided in favor of Miss Jane’s family. “As far as I know, or have heard,” Jones continued, her “perturbed spirit is now at rest.”

That brought little peace, however.

Williams, in a 1964 interview, recalled that several brick masons had been sent running from the house after hearing strange footsteps, laughter and whispers.

A happier ghost tale has been a staple at the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace since 1917, when Nelly Kinzie Gordon, Juliette’s mother, died. In the final moments of Nelly’s life, the legend goes, she suddenly smiled like a bride and stretched out her arms. Soon thereafter, as saddened family members left the room, they came upon an elderly butler who told them that he had just seen a youthful and handsome William Washington Gordon II, Nelly’s husband and Juliette’s father. Gordon, who died five years earlier, had come to get Miss Nelly, the butler said.

A scared foreman of the crew, Williams said, told him “that house is full of people that ain’t working for you.”

Such tales have, of course, put the Hampton-Lillibridge House high atop current lists of haunted sights to see.

Still, these, and just about any other Savannah ghost stories, pale in comparison to the rambunctious

Sources: Georgia Historical Society files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; www. examiner.com; www. juliettegordonlowbirthplace. org; www.sorrelweedhouse. com; www.usatoday.com; www.travelchannel.com; www.cnbc.com.

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Historic District H is for the Savannah National Historic Landmark District, a prestigious two-square-mile confirmation of the city’s historic, architectural and cultural significance.

National Historic Landmark status is a step up from a listing on the National Historic Register. The National Park Service judges NHL nominations, and approves them only after intensive study and a favorable recommendation from the National Park System Advisory Board.

variety of spatial experience throughout the fabric of the district.”

It further goes on to say that “Savannah survives today as an essentially nineteenth century collection of buildings, built upon (Gen. James Edward) Oglethorpe’s eighteenth plan, a truly superlative urban environment.”

Georgia, in 2004, had 46 NHLs, including the Etowah Mounds near Cartersville, the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic District in Atlanta and the Warm Springs Historic District.

The National Park Service, in its nomination form for NHL status for Savannah, lavished complements upon the city: “While Savannah does possess a number of very distinguished buildings, and while it has certainly played its role in the events of American history, the real meaning of the area lies in something else. It lies in the wholeness of the place, in the rational nature of the rhythmic placement of streets, buildings and open areas, and it lies in the great

The Savannah NHL designation was approved in 1966. Its boundaries are the Savannah River, Gwinnett Street, MLK Jr. Boulevard and East Broad Street, and it encompasses more than 1,100 historic buildings.

They include such familiar names as the Owens-Thomas House, the Davenport House, Independent Presbyterian

Church, the Pink House, Gordon Row, Scudder’s Row, Christ Episcopal Church, Factor’s Walk, Gibbons’ Range, the Spencer Woodbridge House and the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.

Notable African-American sites include First African Baptist Church, The Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, Beach Institute and the King-Tisdell Cottage.

Beneath the auditorium of First African Baptist Church lies a subfloor, 4 feet in height, that was part of the Underground Railroad. Holes carved in the main floor are in the shape of an African prayer symbol known as a Congolese Cosmogram. In Africa, it also means “Flash of the Spirits” and represents birth, life, death and rebirth.

Congregation Mickve Israel, home of a Jewish community that is the oldest in the South and third oldest in U.S., moved several times after the Revolution, and eventually settled in a small synagogue at Liberty Street and Perry Lane. In the 1870s, when that building became too cramped for the growing congregation, a grand neo-Gothic Revival-style synagogue was constructed on Monterey Square.

Its archives contain letters from presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and the Torah that Savannah’s original Jewish settlers brought with them on the William and Sarah in 1733.

In the sum of all this, said the nomination form, “Volumes can and have been written about old Savannah, attempting to dissect and analyze the scale, the materials, and above all, the serene human qualities of these streetscapes which combine to form one of America’s most outstanding successes in planning and growth.”

Sources: New Georgia Encyclopedia; National Register of Historic Places, Nomination Form, for the Savannah Georgia NHL Historic District; www.nps.gov.; www.myhsf.org.; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; Congregation Mickve Israel; Isaiah Davenport House Museum

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“Savannah survives today as an essentially nineteenth century collection of buildings, built upon (Gen. James Edward) Oglethorpe’s eighteenth plan, a truly superlative urban environment.”

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Islands I is for the islands surrounding the city of Savannah, separate and distinct patches of history, culture, development and repose in a colorful intercoastal quilt.

that, however, proved to be a very thin shield when the Union Army opened up on Pulaski with rifled artillery on April 10, 1862.

Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe quickly noticed the military value of the islands, and he sent Noble Jones out to Isle of Hope in 1736. Jones’ fortified tabby house at Wormsloe was a key element in Savannah’s outer defenses during the 1739-48 War of Jenkins’ Ear. A far grander bulwark, Fort Pulaski on Cockspur Island, still watches over the Savannah River approach to the city. A massive brick fortification, it took from 1829 to 1847 to complete. Today, it’s a National Monument and a time capsule that helps tell the story of the Civil War. Among the officers stationed there during that period was a young Robert E. Lee, then a lieutenant fresh out of West Point. Some 30 years later, Lee returned.

He was by then a general, wearing the gray uniform of the Confederate Army.

As the commander for the coastal defenses of Georgia and South Carolina, Lee was charged with making sure Fort Pulaski was ready to repel any Union attack. Built with 25 million bricks, with walls 32 feet high, and seven to 11 feet thick, the fort seemed impenetrable. All

The McQueen’s Island Trail, a popular six-mile walking and running path built on an old railway bed, is accessible from the entrance to Fort Pulaski.

There is a strong Gullah-Geechee cultural connection between Ossabaw Island and Pin Point. Ossabaw, which now is stateowned and reachable only by boat, was home to several plantations during the antebellum era.

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After the Civil War, many former slaves stayed on the island. During the 1880s and 1890s, however, most of the AfricanAmerican population left the island for the mainland. The Hinder Me Not Church congregation moved to Pin Point and established the Sweet Field of Eden Church.

This quirky oceanfront community, located just 15 miles east of Savannah’s National Landmark Historic District, has a rich and fascinating history all its own.

Over the years, a number of different flags have flown over Tybee Island, claiming this coastal paradise for Spain, England, France, the Confederacy and

Many of them and their descendants worked at the A.S. Varn & Son Oyster Seafood factory, which was in business from 1926 to 1985. Now, the factory building is the Pin Point Heritage Museum, a carefully staged state-ofthe-art window into this era in AfricanAmerican history.

Nearby, a new bridge takes motorists to Skidaway Island and The Landings, a large, gated community. Skidaway Island State Park, which is easily accessible, is one of the most popular destinations in the state park system.

Other islands in this area include Modena, Dutch and Burnside.

Just across the Wilmington River from Skidaway and Dutch, Wilmington and Whitemarsh form part of the islandhopping chain from Savannah to Tybee Island. Once a narrow strip of concrete, U.S. Highway 80, bound Wilmington, Whitemarsh and Tybee. Now, with the Islands Expressway providing additional access, Wilmington and Whitemarsh residents can get into the city quickly, yet have their own schools, churches and shopping centers close at hand.

At the end of Highway 80, Tybee remains Savannah’s link to the Atlantic Ocean.

Named after a Native American word for “salt,” Tybee Island, has been a popular vacation spot for more than a century, offering miles of public beaches, a popular fishing pier and abundant wildlife.

Source: Savannah Morning News files; visittybee.com

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William

Jay

J is for influential architect William Jay, originally from Bath, England, who came to America as one of its first professionally trained architects. He left an indelible mark on Savannah, as he is still celebrated worldwide as one of the legends of his craft.

When William Jay disembarked from the good ship Dawn in Savannah on Dec. 29, 1817, he had several important circumstances in his favor. Only 24 or 25 (His birth date is given as either 1792 or 1793.), he was a professional architect, the first in Georgia. Through family contacts, he had already arranged to complete a house for a wealthy client.

And, his arrival coincided with an enormous upswing in the city’s economy, fueled by cotton exports.

Jay launched himself into a whirlwind of connections and contracts. He designed several luxurious townhouses for wealthy clients, Greek Revival residences that had a presence and style unlike anything ever built in Savannah before.

He also designed public buildings, and, like his houses, they stood apart from surrounding structures.

He was the first builder to use structural cast iron in Georgia, the first to install

indoor plumbing and the first to incorporate small backstairs for servants’ use into house designs.

It was a remarkable record, but the seeds of its termination were sown a short time after Jay reached shore in Savannah. The Panic of 1819 struck the United States hard: It was the first widespread economic downturn in the nation’s history. Its consequences were slow to reach Savannah, and when they did the situation was exacerbated by twin catastrophes that struck the city in 1820—a January fire that destroyed some 463 downtown buildings, and a yellow fever epidemic that began in May and eventually killed more than a tenth of the population of Savannah.

Many of Jay’s patrons were soon forced into bankruptcy, and he returned to England in 1822.

He designed a number of buildings in Cheltenham, but a development he was involved in failed, and Jay in 1828 found himself bankrupt as well. In 1836, he accepted a position as architect and civil engineer on the remote Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. He died at that distant post the very next year.

Richardson-Owens-Thomas House: Built 1816-1819 for Richard Richardson, president of the Savannah Branch of the United States. Financial woes forced Richardson to sell the house in 1822. It was bought in 1830 by Savannah planter and lawyer George Owens, and stayed in that family’s possession until 1951, when it was bequeathed to the Telfair Museum of Art. It is still a Telfair property and is now a house museum.

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Scarbrough House: Built 1818-19 for William Scarbrough, a Savannah merchant.

Just a year later, it was sold to cover Scarbrough’s debts. After the Civil War, it changed hands several times, and in 1873 was renovated for service as a school for African-American children, a role it fulfilled for almost 90 years. It was purchased by Historic Savannah Foundation in the mid-1960s, and several years later became that organization’s headquarters. The house’s current occupant is the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum.

Pavilion in Johnson Square: A temporary structure put up to hold a ball and dinner to celebrate President James Monroe’s 1819 visit to Savannah. Its ceiling was an enormous flag, and its walls were lined with crimson and set off with fluted pilasters made of muslin. All this was lit by large chandeliers.

Bulloch House: Built 1818-19 for Archibald Stobo Bulloch, who, like so many of Jay’s clients, went broke a short time later. The house featured a central staircase that wound up from a circle of six Corinthian columns and graced Orleans Square until 1916 when it was torn down to clear space for the Municipal Auditorium.

Savannah Branch of the Bank of the United States: Built 1820-21 at St. Julian and Drayton streets, it featured six massive columns on its portico. Its classic lines, however, were ruined years later when a second story was added. It was torn down in 1924, and in 1932 the copper plate from its cornerstone was donated to the Georgia Historical Society.

U.S. Custom House and Warehouses: Built 1818-1819, for Archibald Stobo Bulloch, collector for the Port of Savannah. It was located on Bryan Street, between Bull and Drayton streets, and Jay was to be paid $19,100 for building the two-story structure on a $10,000 lot. It was not yet completed when the great fire of 1820 gutted it.

Telfair House: Built 1818-19 for Alexander Telfair, a Savannah planter with extensive holdings in Georgia and South Carolina. It eventually passed to Mary Telfair, Alexander’s sister, who died in 1875 and bequeathed the house to the Georgia Historical Society. After extensive modifications, it opened in 1886 as the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences. Now known as the Telfair Academy, it is the oldest public art museum in the South.

Savannah Theatre: Built on Chippewa Square in 1817-1818, it opened on Dec. 4, 1818, with the comedy “The Soldier’s Daughter.” Four separate fires have since eliminated the building’s historical integrity.

Other buildings in downtown Savannah often attributed to Jay include the Wayne-Gordon House, the City Hotel and the Savannah Free School.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; National Historic Landmark Nomination for the Scarbrough House; National Historic Landmark Nomination for the OwensThomas House; Chatham-Effingham-Liberty Regional Library; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848,”

by Daniel Walker Howe; “Classical Savannah: Fine & Decorative Arts 1800-1840,” by Page Talbot; www.telfair.org; www.shipsofthesea.org; www. anthemion.com.

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King Cotton K is for King Cotton, the once plantation-produced fiber whose ofttragic narrative threads its way through the history of Savannah from the colonial period to the present day.

Cotton was first planted in Savannah in 1734, and the first shipment to England went across the Atlantic in 1749.

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, cotton’s economic potential was obvious, but a method to make it profitable was not. The dilemma was separating the seeds from the fiber, a delicate and time-consuming task that was then being done by hand.

the 16th largest in the United States, with exports exceeding $14 million.

There was also an attendant increase in the state’s slavery population. In 1790, the slave population stood at 29,264.

In 1800, the number was 59,699; in 1810, it was 105,218; in 1820, 149,656; in 1840, 280,944. In 1860, the figure from Georgia’s slave census was 462,198, 44 percent of the state’s population.

That all changed in 1793. New England native Eli Whitney, working at Mulberry Grove, a plantation just upriver from Savannah, tinkered on the concept for a few days and then produced the first working cotton gin, one that cleaned some 50 pounds of cotton a day.

Boom. That small, simple machine drastically and dramatically altered the economic and social structure of Savannah, Georgia and the South.

In 1790, some 1,000 bales of cotton passed through Savannah. In 1820, that figure jumped to 90,000. During those 30 years, the city grew enough to become 45

And, as cotton production and slave populations grew, the nation became embroiled in a vociferous and sometimes violent debate over what became known as the South’s peculiar institution. In 1858, a year after the Dred Scott decision and a year before John Brown’s raid, South Carolina Sen. James Henry Hammond delivered a fiery speech on the struggle to decide whether Kansas would enter the nation as a free state or a slave state.

“No, you dare not make war on cotton,” said Hammond. “No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king.”

Thus was born the term “King Cotton.” any other South Atlantic port. In 1912, Savannah was the second-largest cotton port in the world, trailing only Liverpool.

That year, Savannah shipped more than 2 million bales, a figure made possible, according to a Savannah Press article, by a recent deepening of the harbor.

Events, of course, proved Hammond wrong. Some six years later, Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, at the end of his March to the Sea, spared Savannah, but sent the immense wealth of cotton stored in its warehouses—some 38,500 bales valued at $28 million—to New York.

After the Civil War, the production of cotton made a quick recovery. The Savannah Cotton Exchange, the first organization of its kind in the South, was formed in 1872. The iconic symbol of this renaissance, the Cotton Exchange on Bay Street, was designed and constructed by William Gibbons Preston in 1886-87.

By 1905, Savannah’s exports, chiefly cotton and naval stores (pine timber, resin and distilled turpentine) were greater than

Cotton continued to flourish until the 1920s when the boll weevil, a miniscule beetle some 16 millimeters long, devastated the crop throughout Georgia and the rest of the South. Production plummeted as cotton acreage fell.

By 1951, the Cotton Exchange building no longer housed any cotton businesses. In 1956, a Savannah Morning News article lamented the closure of Anderson Clayton & Co., the last cotton office on Bay Street.

“King Cotton is no more,” wrote Frank Rossiter in his popular City Beat column.

But cotton has since made another comeback, this one aided by the Boll Weevil Eradication Program. In 2005, Georgia produced 2.14 million bales of cotton, close to the levels being harvested a century earlier.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,”

by Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; Library of Congress website.

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Juliette Gordon

Low

L is for Juliette Gordon Low, the Savannah heiress whose legacy, groups of smiling Girl Scouts, can be seen walking to and from the three downtown sites that define her life, challenges and accomplishments.

She was born on Oct. 31, 1860, into a wealthy and influential family, and given the nickname of Daisy at an early age.

Her grandfather, William Washington Gordon, was the founder of the Central of Georgia Railroad. Her parents, William Washington Gordon II and Eleanor (Nelly) Kinzie Gordon, were community leaders and were devoted to each other.

During the Civil War, Nelly trekked to Virginia and stood by a road for several days, waiting until her husband, a Confederate cavalry officer, finally rode by.

Daisy married wealthy Savannah resident William Mackay Low on Dec. 21, 1886, her parents’ 29th wedding anniversary. Sadly, after the ceremony, a grain of good-luck rice lodged in one of her ears and the resulting infection destroyed the hearing in that ear. An injury the previous year had damaged the other ear, so Daisy struggled with deafness for the rest of her life.

And, her relationship with her husband did not mirror that of her parents. Low

was in the process of divorcing Daisy when he died in 1905.

She inherited all his Georgia property, including a stately house on Lafayette Square. In 1912, in the carriage house behind that main house, she founded the organization that is today the Girl Scouts of the USA. Daisy devoted the rest of her life to scouting, often traveling and always aiming to expand the movement.

She died in the house on Lafayette Square on Jan. 17, 1927, and was buried in her Girl Scout uniform in Laurel Grove Cemetery.

Girl Scouts-centric sites in Savannah: The Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, where she was born and raised, at 10 E. Oglethorpe Ave. is a museum and a National Historic Landmark.

The Andrew Low House, where she lived with her husband, William Mackay Low, at 329 Abercorn St. is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Girl Scout First Headquarters, the carriage house where she started holding scouting meetings, is at 330 Drayton St. It is, of course, a national historic site as well.

Juliette Gordon Low’s Girl Scouts Legacy in Savannah

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; www.juliettegordonlowbirthplace.org; www.girlscouts.org.

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Johnny

Mercer M is for Savannah native Johnny Mercer, the famed lyricist whose 1944 hit “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” was recently selected for preservation at the Library of Congress, adding a little more luster to a singularly successful songwriting career that spanned from the 1930s into the 1970s.

Mercer recorded “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” himself, with the Pied Pipers as background singers. That version rose to number 2 on the hit charts.

Soon afterwards, Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters also recorded the song, and their effort climbed to number 2 on the charts as well.

Since then, it has been covered by many other artists, including Artie Shaw, Kay Kyser, and Aretha Franklin. “Ac-CentTchu-Ate the Positive” was also on the soundtrack CD for “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”

For Mercer, of course, hit recordings were nothing new. In all, he wrote more than 1,100 songs and won four Academy Awards.

Yet, he never lost touch with his birthplace and often returned. He did so by train, and he frequently penned songs with railroad references, such as

“On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” one of his Oscar winners.

In addition to his song-writing acumen, Mercer was also a sharp businessman. In 1942, he was one of the cofounders of Capitol Records. In 1955, using some of the profits from the sale of Capitol Records, Mercer paid off the remaining $300,000 debt from the Great Depression-era failure of his father’s real estate company.

He enclosed a note with the check, saying in part, “It has been my ambition since boyhood to pay off my father’s debt …”

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; www.popularsong.org; georgiamusic.org.

In 1976, Mercer died of complications from cancer at age 66. He’s buried at Bonaventure Cemetery. A marble bench at his grave site is carved with the names of several of his hit songs, including “Blues in the Night,” “Moon River” and “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.”

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Nuclear

Ship Savannah N is for the Nuclear Ship Savannah, a sleek 596-foot-long, combination passenger-cargo vessel that got off to a glowing start, but has since spent several decades languishing in berths along the East Coast.

Named for the SS Savannah, which used steam power to cross the Atlantic Ocean on its maiden voyage in 1819, the NS Savannah cost $47.6 million to build, and was a key part of Atoms for Peace, a program promoted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, in ceremonies at Camden, N.J., christened the NS Savannah on July 21, 1959. It sailed into Savannah on Aug. 22, 1962, part of a maiden voyage that sent it through the Panama Canal and on to Seattle for the World’s Fair.

In 1994, she was shifted again, this time to the “ghost fleet” anchored at Newport News, Va. During those years, she still managed to haul in several accolades. She was named a Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 1983, and a Nuclear Engineering Landmark and National Historic Landmark in 1991.

In 2008, the Savannah was moved to its present berth at the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore. Her owner, the U.S. Maritime Administration, plans to maintain the Savannah in protective storage for the foreseeable future.

From 1965 to 1970, she sailed some 450,000 miles. Her hybrid design, however, made her unprofitable, and the U.S. Maritime Administration took her out of active service in 1972.

She was then presented to Savannah, but her namesake city’s efforts to turn a profit with her failed as well. In 1981, she sailed a few miles up the coast to Charleston and a berth at Patriot’s Point.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; articles.baltimoresun.com; Virginian-Pilot website; gcaptain.com; www.maritime.org.

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James Edward

Oglethorpe O is for James Edward Oglethorpe, the British general, social activist, city planner and treaty negotiator who still casts a considerable shadow over the city he founded over 280 years ago.

1689: A son named James is born to Eleanor and Theophilus Oglethorpe. This James Oglethorpe died the next year, but the record of his birth confuses several future biographers of James Edward Oglethorpe and leads to incorrect ages often being cited in articles and books.

Dec. 22, 1696: James Edward Oglethorpe is born in London. A child of privilege, he grows up at the family estate in Godalming.

1714: Young James is admitted to Corpus Christi College at Oxford University.

1722: Oglethorpe wins election to the House of Commons.

1728-29: A friend of Oglethorpe’s, Robert Castell, dies of smallpox while in jail for debt. Oglethorpe then starts an effort to reform England’s prisons. As part of this campaign, he and several associates discuss starting an American colony that will offer land and opportunities to poor but honest Englishmen.

1732: King George II grants a charter for the colony of Georgia. It will be governed by 21 trustees, one of whom is Oglethorpe.

Feb. 12, 1733: Oglethorpe and his fellow colonists land at Yamacraw Bluff and spend the first night in Georgia. A few days later, Oglethorpe asks local Indian leader Tomochichi to accompany him on a visit to Charleston. The positive reception there is the first step on a 1734 trip to England for Tomochichi and several other Yamacraw Indians.

July 11, 1733: 42 Jewish refugees arrive in Savannah. In large part because one of them was a doctor, Oglethorpe lets the Jews remain, even though the trustees opposed their settlement. (Oglethorpe did go along with the other four Trusteeagreed restrictions – no rum, no lawyers, no Catholics and no slaves.)

1734: In a drawing of Savannah, Oglethorpe’s residence—a tent—is clearly visible near a clump of four trees.

The drawing also shows the distinctive arrangement of squares and houses that Oglethorpe created, the system that is still prominent in the city today.

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1736 to 1740: Oglethorpe lives in a small, simple house at the site where the U.S. Custom House now stands. (The house is visible in the 1837 Panorama of

1752: Georgia becomes a royal colony as Oglethorpe and the other trustees return their charter.

1754: Oglethorpe loses his seat in Parliament.

1775-83: Though he’s the senior general in the British Army, Oglethorpe does not play an active role in the American Revolution.

June 4, 1785: Oglethorpe meets and has an amicable discussion with John Adams, the first American ambassador to Great Britain.

Savannah by Firmin Cerveau.)

1739: England declares war on Spain.

The conflict revolves around the capture and disfigurement of an English sea captain—Robert Jenkins—who claims his ear was cut off by a Spanish officer.

Georgia, which borders the Spanish colony in Florida, is caught up in the spat, known in history as the War of Jenkins’ Ear. Also that year, Tomochichi dies and is buried in Percival (now Wright) Square with full honors.

June 30, 1785: Oglethorpe dies at age 88.

1740: Oglethorpe leads an expedition in an unsuccessful attack on the Spanish fort at St. Augustine.

1742: A force led by Oglethorpe decisively defeats a Spanish army in the Battle of Bloody Marsh on St. Simons Island. The Spanish never threaten the British colonies again, and a grateful King George promotes Oglethorpe to brigadier general.

1743: Oglethorpe returns to England to face a court martial based on charges made by another officer. He does not return to Georgia.

1744: A signal year for Oglethorpe—he’s cleared of all charges made against him; Parliament votes to reimburse him for the fortune he spent while settling and defending Georgia; and he marries English heiress Elizabeth Wright.

The Oglethorpe Monument: Unveiled in Chippewa Square on Nov. 23, 1910, it was the culmination of a campaign that lasted almost as long as Oglethorpe’s tenure in Georgia. The Oglethorpe Monument Association was chartered on May 18, 1901, and charged with raising the necessary funds. The state legislature, in 1906, approved $15,000 for the project, contingent upon the local association raising at least $5,000.

Daniel Chester French was chosen as the sculptor and New York architect Henry Bacon was given the task of designing the pedestal and base.

(French and Bacon later combined on another project, the Lincoln Memorial.)

After extensive study, French decided to portray Oglethorpe as a military commander in his 9-foot-tall bronze statue. A lion holding a shield was placed at each corner of the base. On these shields, Oglethorpe’s coat of arms and the seals of the colony, the state and the city were displayed.

The abilities of French and Bacon didn’t come cheap. The eventual cost was $40,000; $15,000 from the state, $15,000 from the city, and $10,000 from the Oglethorpe Monument Association, Society of Colonial Dames, Daughters of the American Revolution and other groups.

The unveiling was the culmination of three days of festivities. A football game between the University of Georgia and Auburn University was played, and cavalry charges and motorcycle races were staged.

Oglethorpe’s monumental plan The origin of the plan put forth by Oglethorpe in 1733 to develop Savannah is still the subject of vigorous debate.

The theories put forth include a stated similarity to the design of the Piazza Carlina and Turin in Italy; the possibility that Robert Castell, the friend of Oglethorpe who died in prison, provided the spark with references to a Roman architect in a 1728 book; and the chance that it came from a plan for Peking in a 1705 book.

There is very little argument, however, about its efficiency.

Based on a repetitive placing of inside streets and buildings around an open square, with outside streets allowing an uninterrupted traffic flow, the system has stood up through almost three centuries.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; “Oglethorpe in Perspective: Georgia’s Founder After Two Hundred Years,” edited by Phinizy Spalding and Harvey H. Jackson III; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu.

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Casimir

Pulaski P is for Gen. Casimir Pulaski, the gallant Polish cavalry leader whose sacrifice to the American cause in the Revolutionary War was immortalized in a 54-foot-high statue that has graced the center of Monterey Square since 1854.

Pulaski was mortally wounded on Oct. 9, 1779, during the Siege of Savannah. He and his cavalry unit, the Pulaski Legion, were part of a dramatic but failed final attack on the British lines. The Pole, who had joined Gen. George Washington’s army in 1777, died two days later.

The fatal wounding of the general is depicted in one of the monument’s panels.

In the 1990s, the city disassembled the monument for repairs and renovations.

A metal box found in the monument’s base was purported to contain Pulaski’s remains, but DNA tests proved inconclusive.

The monument was reassembled in December of 2000. One of the sections of marble was placed upside down, just as it had been had been in 1854.

In 1825, when the Marquis de Lafayette visited Savannah, he dedicated the cornerstone to a monument in Johnson Square that memorialized both Pulaski and Gen. Nathanael Greene. The city had planned to build separate monuments to the two heralded soldiers, but could not afford to do so at that time.

That changed in 1852, when the lottery commission finally had enough funds to contract for the Pulaski Monument.

Carved in Italy from Carrara marble by sculptor Robert E. Launitz, the statue was shipped to Savannah in 34 separate pieces and then reassembled on a granite base.

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On Oct. 9, 2005, the 226th anniversary of the climactic battle of the Siege of Savannah, the remains found underneath the monument were reburied in Monterey Square with full military honors. Three Polish veterans, who had served in the Polish cavalry during World War II, were part of the procession that marched the remains to the square.

Other monuments, memorials and tributes to Pulaski The story of Gen. Gen. Casimir Pulaski has resounded with Americans for generations, and tributes to him are common in the United States.

Here in Savannah, in addition to the monument in Monterey Square, there is Pulaski Square, Pulaski Ward, Pulaski Elementary School and Fort Pulaski, a National Monument on Cockspur Island.

In Georgia, there is a Pulaski County, one of seven named for the general. The others are in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia. Towns in Tennessee and Iowa were also named for him.

Another statue to him sits on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., and the USS Casimir Pulaski, a ballistic missile submarine, was part of the U.S. Navy from 1964 until 1994.

And there are at least two bridges named for Pulaski, one in New York, the other in New Jersey.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; www. internationalchimney.com (the company that repaired the monument); City of Savannah Tour Guide Manual; www.liveoakpl.org.

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Quercus Virginiana Q is for Quercus Virginiana, the Latin name of the majestic southern live oak trees that have served as Savannah’s moss-strewn sentinels for centuries.

Just last year, the Georgia Ports Authority placed several gnarled oak trees that stand near its Garden City Terminal under protective governance. Two of the trees date back to the mid-17th century, and three others to the 18th century.

Other notable, and much more accessible, trees that were around when Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe settled Savannah in 1733 include the Candler Oak and the Majestic Oak. Standing just across Drayton Street from Forsyth Park, the Candler Oak is thought to be some 300 years old. The largest tree in the Historic District this venerable oak already had its place in the local forest when Gen. James Oglethorpe arrived in 1733.

It’s 50 feet tall, with a 16-foot-wide trunk and 107-foot circumference at its crown. Its place in history did not protect it from pavement, however, and by 1980, the tree was on the precipice of dying. It was saved by the Savannah Tree Foundation, which secured a conservation easement in 1984 to protect it.

Out on the eastside, the aptly-titled Majestic Oak also harkens back to Savannah’s earliest years. Besides its age, its measurements are also impressive—a girth of 27 feet, 8 inches (measured at 4 feet from the ground), and a breadth of 165 feet, 7 inches (measured at the longest distance of its branches from tip to tip).

In the 18th and 19th centuries, live oaks of that stature were highly sought by shipbuilders. In addition to the strength lent by live-oak timbers, the large, curving branches near the ground were ideally shaped for the curved sections of ships’ hulls.

The U.S. Navy sent several expeditions to St. Simons Island in the 1790s to fell live oaks and transport the timbers back to Northern shipyards. One of the ships built by those yards, the USS Constitution, won everlasting fame as “Old Ironsides” in the War of 1812 because its sides made of Georgia wood proved impervious to British cannon balls.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; “Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy,” by Ian W. Toll; savannahtree.com; warnell.forestry.uga. edu.

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River

Street

R is for River Street, where Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe stepped ashore in February 1733, where tallmasted sailing ships unloaded their cargoes and ballast stones on crowded wharves in the 1800s and where thousands of people a week now stroll along at their leisure, looking at the shops, restaurants and monuments that line the cobble-stone thoroughfare.

In Oglethorpe’s time, and for the next two centuries, River Street was a center of commerce. Upland cotton, grown in middle Georgia and shipped on barges down the Savannah River, or stacked on railroad cars, or even pulled by mules through the turgid waters of the Savannah-Ogeechee Canal, made Savannah one of the busiest ports on the East Coast.

stores, the pine-tree derivatives that patched and waterproofed wooden ships.

But much of the port’s business went downhill in the 1920s, when the boll weevil demolished the cotton industry.

The port started to come back in the 1930s, but the focus of shipping activity shifted upriver. In the late 1940s, the newly organized Georgia Ports Authority opened the Garden City Terminal, and further GPA land purchases centered on old plantations north of Savannah.

One of the most telling Savannah photographs of that era is of the R. Habersham & Co. building on Bay Street.

Cotton bales are stacked in front of the building and a tall spar from a ship moored on the river rises above it in the rear. The company was in business for 150 years, from 1749 until 1899.

The port was really rocking in the early years of the 20th century, when it was the world’s leading exporter of naval 65

After some 200 years of activity, the River Street wharves fell silent. By the early1970s, the area’s outlook was bleak. The wharves were rotten, the old cotton warehouses were dark and foreboding, and River Street was filled with trash.

The only businesses on the street were four shops, a bar and a restaurant.

There was talk of turning the space into a parking lot, but architects Eric Meyerhoff and Robert D. Gunn convinced thenMayor John P. Rousakis that they could come up with a better idea.

and far. In addition to its shops, bars and restaurants, River Street boasts five popular monuments—the AfricanAmerican Monument, the World War II Monument, the Propellor Club’s Anchor Monument, the Waving Girl Monument and the Olympic Yachting Cauldron.

And often, as people are looking at and photographing these monuments, a cargo vessel will glide by, a silent but tangible reminder of what first made River Street great.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Preston Russell and Barbara Hines.

Their concept became Rousakis Riverfront Plaza. Fueled by a $7.3 million investment in federal and city funds, the half-mile-long plaza opened in 1977.

It was an immediate success, and continues to attract visitors from near

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St. Patrick’s Day S is for St. Patrick’s Day, the venerable Irish tradition that Savannah has gradually turned into a lusty, lengthy carnival of festivals, celebrations and parties that garner worldwide attention.

verybesttop10.com list of St. Patrick’s Day Art Installations. That site used a photo of the Forsyth Park Fountain spouting green water to illustrate the city’s appeal.

The city’s first St. Patrick’s Day Parade was on March 17, 1824. No attendance figures were given for that procession, which was put together by the Hibernian Society.

The Greening of the Fountain, which takes place the week before March 17, has a 31-year-history, making it a relative newcomer to Savannah’s celebration. The tradition was started to discourage vandals, who were taking it upon themselves to turn the fountain green on their own.

In the current environment, however, numbers hold huge sway. Crowd estimates for parades vary by year, but the parade itself is generally considered to be the second largest in the United States.

Fox Business News, in a listing of the Best Warm Weather St. Patrick’s Day Parades, placed Savannah at number 9 in 2011, and pointed out that its parade would draw an estimated crowd of 750,000 to a city of 136,000,making it the largest per-capita celebration in the country.

Inclusion on such lists is nothing new for Savannah. It’s number 4 on a National Geographic Top 10, number 4 on a U.S. News & World Report Top 10 and number 3 on an Orbitz Top 10.

Along with all that, it’s number 7 in a much narrower niche category, the

Since 1824, a parade has been held every year except 1830, 1862, 1864, 1867, 1918 and 1921.

Among the most memorable St. Patrick’s Days were: 1847, when the Hibernians raised money for Ireland which was then in the midst of the Great Potato Famine; 1875, when the first floats appeared in the parade; 1931, when J. Joseph Doolan was the last parade marshal to ride a horse; 1941, the first year the Mass was held at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist; 1962, former President Harry Truman attended the parade and spoke at the Hibernian Banquet; 1978, President Jimmy Carter spoke to the Hibernians and to a crowd at Pinkie Master’s Lounge; and 1986, when flaming grits set the table cloth on fire at the Sinn Fein breakfast.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; foxbusiness.com; theverybesttop10.com; travel.nationalgeographic. com; travel.usnews.com.

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Tomochichi T is for Tomochichi, the Indian leader who welcomed the Georgia settlers in 1733, accompanied Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe on a storied trip to England in 1734, and whose contributions to the colony were commemorated in 1739 with one of the first public monuments in America.

Oglethorpe negotiated with Tomochichi, the chief of the Yamacraw Indians, before bringing the other colonists to Savannah. It was a wise move, especially considering the 1715 Yamasee War, a struggle in South Carolina pitting the Creek and Yamasee tribes against backcountry traders and settlers.

After that conflict ended, Tomochichi split from the Creeks and formed the Yamacraws, a band of 200 or so Indians.

They settled on the bluffs overlooking the Savannah River, the location Oglethorpe had chosen to place the new colony.

The Indian chief and the English commander soon forged a strong bond. Tomochichi, and eight Indian companions, received a royal welcome when Oglethorpe took them to England.

The Native Americans met the king and queen and toured several sites, including the Tower of London. Their appearance brought much positive

publicity to the fledgling colony.

Tomochichi continued to be an important figure in Georgia until his death in 1739. Though his exact age was unknown, he was thought to be in his late 90s.

He was buried in Percival (now Wright) Square with impressive pomp and ceremony. Oglethorpe was one of the pallbearers, and, according to a journal kept by another of the participants, some 40 men in arms fired three musket volleys over the grave.

As a sign of his respect for Tomochichi’s contributions, Oglethorpe soon ordered a pyramid of stone to be placed over the grave.

That tribute eventually disappeared, and, in 1883 a large monument to William Washington Gordon, the founder of the Central of Georgia Railroad, was placed in the center of the square.

But, thanks to the efforts of the National Society of Colonial Dames of America in the State of Georgia, another monument to Tomochichi was placed in Wright 71

Square in 1899. Nelly Gordon, the first president of the organization and the wife of William Washington Gordon’s son, helped secure the large boulder of Georgia granite that was positioned in a corner of the square.

Dedicated on April 21, 1899, the boulder is decorated with a bronze tablet that reads “In Memory of Tomochichi—the Mico (chief) of the Yamacraws—the companion of Oglethorpe—and the friend and ally of the Colony of Georgia.”

Tomochichi and Mary Musgrove: Known as Coosaponakeesa among the Creek Indians, Mary Musgrove served as a cultural liaison between colonial Georgia and her Native American community in the mid-eighteenth century.

Introduced by Tomochichi, Musgrove took advantage of her biculturalism to protect Creek interests, maintain peace on the frontier, and expand her business as a trader.

As Pocahontas was to the Jamestown colony and Sacagawea was to the Lewis and Clark expedition, so was Musgrove to the burgeoning Georgia colony.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; “The Challenge of Preserving Public Memory: Commemorating Tomochichi in Savannah,” by Robin B. Williams, Preservation Education & Research, Volume Five, 2012; georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu.

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U.S.

Custom House

U is for the U.S. Custom House, a stern granite structure that has looked down on Bay Street since the 1850s and is indelibly linked to one of the most sordid chapters in the city’s history.

Savannah’s founder, Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe, lived at the site for years, in a simple, small wooden house. Another building, a tabernacle where John Wesley delivered his first sermon in Georgia, sat at the back of the lot.

The federal government purchased the site in 1845, and set about the construction of a new custom house, the building where duties were paid and ships cleared to enter or leave the port.

The government hired architect John Norris to head the project. A New York native, Norris was then new to Savannah, but he was already working on a similar structure, the Custom House in Wilmington, N.C. Norris’ Savannah resume is remarkable.

From 1846 until 1860, when he returned to the North, Norris designed a wealth of notable structures, including the Andrew Low House, the Green-Meldrim House, the Massie School Building, the Abrahams Home for Indigent Females (now a SCAD dormitory), the Cockspur

Island Lighthouse and Stoddard’s Lower Range and Upper Range (Italianate-style warehouses on the waterfront).

Construction of the Savannah Custom House took from 1848 until 1852. Its granite was quarried in Quincy, Mass., and shipped down to Savannah. The six massive columns that support the portico weighed some 15 to 20 tons apiece and had to be lashed to the decks of the ships that brought them from Massachusetts.

When completed, the building was fireproof, and would soon be at the center of the smoldering national debate over slavery.

In 1858, the Wanderer landed at Jekyll Island and offloaded a cargo of some 400 slaves, a direct and deliberate violation of the 1807 federal Slave Importation Act. A famed racing yacht that had been converted to a slave ship, the Wanderer was owned by Savannah businessman Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar.

Federal charges were filed against Lamar, and the trials of him and several associates were held on the second floor of the Savannah Custom House.

The highly publicized cases were heard in November of 1859 and May of 1860.

Another prominent Savannah resident, U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Moore Wayne, presided.

Most of the charges failed to stick, and Lamar was given a slap on the wrist—a $500 fine and 30 days in jail (which he served in an apartment)—for the violations.

In January of 1861, the Custom House passed from federal control when Georgia voted to leave the Union. In December of 1864, with the arrival of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, control of the Custom House returned to the United States.

And, in 1889, in the same building that housed the Wanderer trial, John H. Deveaux took over his duties as the first African-American U.S. Customs collector.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; U.S. General Services Administration website; www. historicsavannahparks.com.

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Victory V is for Victory Drive, the heralded highway that starts at its intersection with Ogeechee Road and runs to the end of Butler Avenue on Tybee Island, a four-laned, concrete-based display of monuments, mansions, flowers, trees, rivers, bridges and marshes that has dazzled motorists for decades.

The route, 19.8 miles in length, is connected by its role as the final eastern stretch of U.S. Highway 80, but its two distinctive segments are separated and defined by scenery and history.

Drive Those events coincided with a beautification effort along Estill, a program that included the planting of 460 palm trees in 1910.

Bigger changes began occurring in 1919, the year after World War I ended, when the decision was made to turn Estill into a military memorial boulevard.

In May of 1922, the cornerstone for a monument to the Chatham County war dead was placed at the intersection of Estill and Waters avenues.

At the turn of the century, the 20th century that is, the section that extends from Ogeechee Road to the Wilmington River was known as Estill Avenue, the city of Savannah portion, and Dale Avenue, the Chatham County portion.

The two roads, then at the very southern end of Savannah, were part of the course for the 1908-1911 American Grand Prize races and Vanderbilt Cup, a series of 11 hotly contested events that brought international attention to the city.

The track covered some 17 miles and sent the cars roaring past a 5,000-seat grandstand on Estill.

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soon began to decorate the island’s streets.

In 1936, the Savannah’s Park and Tree Commission planted 317 palm trees along its side of the route. Eventually some 2,800 palms were planted along the length of the corridor, each a tribute to a fallen World War I serviceman, and Victory Drive was frequently described as “the longest avenue of palms” in the United States.

The number of trees along the route, however, has diminished over the years.

That ceremony included the presence of Mamie T. Taylor of Savannah, who represented “the forgotten mother.” Her son, Cyrus Steadwell Taylor, was one of the 135 servicemen from Chatham slain in “the war to end all wars.”

Newspaper accounts of the event still referred to Estill Avenue, but the thoroughfare’s name had been officially changed to Victory Drive by Savannah City Council a month earlier on April 5, 1922. This alteration, which came in response to a petition from local property owners, quickly won wide acceptance.

The World War I monument, made of Georgia granite, was unveiled in 1929.

Because of traffic concerns, it was moved a few yards to a quieter spot inside Daffin Park in 1999.

There were also significant developments in the 1920s on the other portion of the Victory Drive corridor, the section that runs from the Wilmington River to the end of Tybee. Dubbed the “million dollar road,” a new connection to Whitemarsh, Wilmington and Tybee islands opened to traffic on June 21, 1923.

It was paved with shell and crossed several draw bridges en route to its terminus. It also changed the face of Tybee as rows of raised beach cottages

As of 2015, proposed revitalization of the corridor, headed by the Chatham County-Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission, is currently being studied.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; draft copy of the Victory Drive Corridor Study; www.savannahgagov.

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Washington W is for Washington Guns, the two ornate brass cannons captured from the British that the first president presented to the Chatham Artillery following his party-filled 1791 visit to Savannah.

George Washington and his entourage pulled into Savannah on May 12, 1791.

The president was then halfway through the first presidential junket, a 1,800-mile journey that began in Philadelphia on March 20, 1791 and concluded in late June when he returned to that city, then the nation’s capital.

Savannah was the southern terminus of the trip, and Washington spent four days here. The Chatham Artillery fired a salute when he arrived, during a subsequent dinner and at a Saturday afternoon banquet at the bluff overlooking the Savannah River.

Washington himself gave the 13th and final toast—“the present dexterous corps of artillery”—at that affair. He subsequently further honored the unit with a gift, two cannons that American forces seized after their victory at the 1781 Battle of Yorktown.

One is of British manufacture, the other French, and they have since acquired a history of their own.

Guns

They have fired salutes to distinguished Savannah visitors, including the Marquis de Lafayette and presidents James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, Chester A. Arthur, Jefferson Davis, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, William Howard Taft and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

During the Civil War, they were buried beneath the old Chatham Artillery Armory, and not dug back up until 1872, when the federal occupation of Savannah came to an end.

In 1881, along with a Chatham Artillery contingent, they participated in the centennial celebration of the Battle of Yorktown.

They sat for years outside the Chatham Artillery Armory on Bull Street. In 1958, they were shifted to their present location on Bay Street, just east of City Hall. Popularly known as “George” and “Martha,” they have since proved to be a tourist favorite.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; “Savannah: In the Time of Peter Tondee,” by Carl Solana Weeks; “Washington: A Life,” by Ron Chernow; www. todayingeorgiahistory.org.

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X

marks the spot

X marks the spot for these 10 notable local structures, each torn down in the name of progress or destroyed by fire.

The Filature: Built on a trust lot in Reynolds Square in 1758-59, this was the first large structure in 18th-century Georgia. It initially housed the colony’s silk production facility, and 15,212 pounds of cocoons were delivered there for processing into raw silk. After the American Revolution, it was put to a variety of uses, including a role as city hall. A 1791 gala to honor President George Washington was held in its long room. A fire that started in the harbor and was spread by the wind destroyed it in 1839.

Liberty Square: Laid out in 1799, it honored the local Revolutionary War “Liberty Boys.” It was paved over in 1935 when the city decided to run U.S. Highway 17, then a main tourist route to Florida, straight through Montgomery Street. It’s one of the city’s two lost squares.

The Hermitage Plantation: An iconic antebellum operation, it sat on the Savannah River, just north of the city, and was owned by Henry McAlpin.

Its slaves worked at a brick kiln and produced iron works. The stylish main house was bought in 1935 by Henry Ford, taken apart grey-brick-by-greybrick, and used to build a home for the auto magnate in Richmond Hill. One of the plantation slave cabins, also built of grey-brick, was disassembled and then rebuilt at Greenfield Village, a Ford museum in Dearborn, Mich.

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Elbert Square: Laid out in 1801, it was named for Samuel Elbert, a Revolutionary War soldier and Georgia governor. It’s the second lost square, another casualty of the 1935 decision to make Montgomery Street straighter for Florida-bound motorists.

Tybrisa Pavilion: Built in 1900 by the Central of Georgia Railroad to increase visitation to Tybee Island, it quickly became an attraction for tourists and locals. It was a popular spot for well-known bands and singers. Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey were among the performers who helped pack the pavilion’s dance floor. It was destroyed by fire in 1967.

Union Station: Built 1899-1901, Union Station was once a glittering gateway to Savannah. Its twin, onion-domed towers stood above what was then West Broad Street, and presidents William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt came through it. It was torn down in the early 1960s to make room for Interstate 16.

DeSoto Hotel: Built in the Richardsonian Romanesque style by noted architect William Gibbons Preston, this 330-room hotel opened in 1890. A popular destination for travelers going between New York and Florida, its design included a conical roof, a vast array of arches and distinctive terra cotta features. Its central courtyard contained a lawn, orange trees, paths, tennis court, orchestra pavilion and swimming pool. It was demolished in the 1960s.

Park & Shop Garage: More notorious than notable, it was built in 1954, going up over the entirety of Ellis Square, where City Market had stood before. It was demolished in 2005, shortly after the expiration of a 50-year-lease, and replaced with an imaginatively designed open space that has revitalized the square and surrounding area.

Pulaski Hotel: A Johnson Square landmark for more than a century, it was built in 1839 by Peter Wiltberger, who was also the owner of Bonaventure Cemetery. In 1850 the four-story Pulaski, which already noted for its wine selection, became the first Savannah hotel to use gas. In the 1930s, neon tubing lit its elaborate entrance canopy. The Pulaski was demolished in the late 1950s.

The Augustus Wetter House: Located at the intersection of West Broad Street (now MLK Jr. Boulevard) and Oglethorpe Avenue, the house was built in 1822. It was acquired in 1837 by Margaret Telfair, and passed to Wetter when he married into the Telfair family. The three-story house was particularly noted for its castiron balconies, which cost $100,000. In the 1930s, the house was photographed for the Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South and the Historic American Buildings Survey. It was torn down in 1950.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Preston Russell and Barbara Hines: “Savannah: In the Time of Peter Tondee,”

by Carl Solana Weeks; “Lost Savannah: Photographs from the Collection of the Georgia Historical Society,” by Luciana M. Spracher; “Historic Signs of Savannah: Photographs from the Collection of the Georgia Historical Society,” by Justin Gunther; “Tybee Island: The Long Branch of the South,” by Robert A. Ciucevich; www.savannahga.gov; www.thetybeetimes.net; www.thehenryford.org; www.loc.gov.

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Yellow

Fever

Y is for yellow fever, the dreaded and seemingly incurable disease that killed thousands of people in Savannah during three 19th-century epidemics that each time wrapped the city in terror for months.

The first, in 1820, began in May and ended in October. In all, some 660 people died, a tenth of the city’s population. Many people fled. Those who stayed, faced, in the words of one witness, a “scene of sickness, misery and ruin.”

The next, in 1854, was even worse.

The deaths that year totaled 1,040, 934 whites and 106 blacks. One of those who perished was the Right Rev. Francis X. Gartland, the first Catholic bishop of Savannah, who fell ill while caring for other victims.

The last, in 1876, also claimed more than 1,000 people. Another religious leader, this time the Rev. U.L. Houston of First Bryan Baptist Church, was one of those who died.

from his mouth.” The man’s death, the report added, “immediately followed.”

Just two years later, some 20,000 people died in an outbreak of yellow fever that started in New Orleans and worked its way up the Mississippi River to Memphis.

Finally, in 1900, the cause of yellow fever—the aedes aegypti mosquito—was identified, and the disease was soon brought under control.

And, though there no further outbreaks of the disease in Savannah, it did make a comeback of sorts in 2003 when the Isaiah Davenport House Museum put on a living history program titled “Dreadful Pestilence: Encountering Yellow Fever.”

It was a fitting stage: Davenport died in 1827—of yellow fever.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society files; Diocese of Savannah Website; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Preston Russell and Barbara Hines.

A doctor at the Marine Hospital, writing about one of the 1876 victims, said the man, a sailor who arrived in Savannah in July, was sitting in bed, “calm and cheerful,” when “blood suddenly gushed 87

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Zig-Zag Z is for ZigZag, an apt description of our way of life in Savannah. Yes, you can “get there from here,” but it is not usually an easy trip. Ask any Savannahian, and they can provide you with shortcuts to their favorite spots.

From the squares to bridges, to the path the rivers and creeks cut through the marsh, to the pattern of our roads, our everyday activities are set in motion by the design of both our unique natural landscape and the architects of our city’s original infrastructure.

The squares provide green space and are often surrounded by stately mansions, churches and public buildings. Tourists enjoy cantering past them in horse-drawn carriages, but they are not actually going anywhere. For those of us with a destination, and maybe a deadline, the squares simply serve to slow traffic, which was exactly Oglethorpe’s intention.

Hunter Army Airfield is a more recent complication. A bastion of national defense, it is a true blockade when it comes to traffic movement. Look at a map, even a small one on a phone will do, and notice where Hunter sits. Want to go from Oglethorpe Mall out to the Westside, perhaps to Southbridge or Garden City, in a hurry? Good luck with that.

Our one main thoroughfare, Abercorn Street, actually shifts directions entirely when it reaches the south side of town, changing our compasses from north/south to east/west.

Pooler has become a major local shopping destination. It’s especially easy to get to if you’re a tourist traveling on Interstate 95. Not so much if you’re from anywhere on the east side of Hunter.

Ever tried getting to Hilton Head Island? You can see it from the beach at Tybee, but actually driving there usually requires going through downtown, with its squares, and then enduring a road that hasn’t been repaired or repaved since about the time that Oglethorpe left.

All in all, we love our beautiful city, A-Z. And it’s uniqueness is what makes it great. We are famously hard to get to, but it’s a place that is very hard to leave.

Source: 30-plus years of living and driving in Savannah.

Oglethorpe picked this spot for a reason.

Slowly, but surely, like traversing the squares of Bull St., we are embracing his old-world design with a new-world attitude. And thoroughly enjoying the ride..

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The RunnersUp We couldn’t include everything, and we probably missed on a few of your favorites, but the debating sure has been fun!

Here are a few more letters that just missed the cut.

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A

Conrad Aiken, 1889-1973, Savannah writer who won Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Armstrong State University, more recently known as Armstrong Atlantic State University, had its roots downtown as Armstrong Junior College just off Forsyth Park.

Abercorn Street or Abercorn Extension, it’s the street you take past midtown to the south.

Ardsley Park, a historic and upscale neighborhood.

B

Bridges – Talmadge Memorial, Solomon, Houlihan, Thunderbolt and more. If you want to go somewhere, anywhere, you’ll have to cross a bridge.

Bluffs – Areas above the tideline settled early on, making for beautiful streets today. Example: Bluff Drive, Isle of Hope.

Bomb – In 1958 after a collision, a U.S. Air Force plane dropped an unarmed hydrogen bomb off Wassaw Island. The Tybee Bomb has become lore.

Bethesda Academy is the oldest continuously operating child-caring institution in the country.

The Bird Girl statue, made famous in Jack Leigh’s iconic photo on the cover of...

The Book, aka John Berendt’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”

Bamboo Farm, now known as Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens at the Historic Bamboo Farm, part of University of Georgia Cooperative Extension.

Broughton Street Beach Institute Bull Street divides the city in half, named for Col. William Bull.

Ballast stones line River Street after coming over as filler in cargo ships long ago.

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Cats - Look closely and you’ll find lions and cats in statuary and in lanes.

Christ Church Episcopal, Mother Church of Georgia City Market Colonial Park Cemetery Cotton Exchange City Hall Cotton gin – Eli Whitney’s machine that changed the industry was invented at Mulberry Grove.

D

Davenport House was completed in 1820, and its restoration marked the beginning of the city’s preservation movement.

Paula Deen showed the world what’s cooking in Savannah, and brought some tourists our way, too.

Duels were fought just off Colonial Park Cemetery, where some victims are buried.

E

The Girl Scouts were organized in Savannah.

Gnats or sandflies, call them what you will. These are warm-weather pests that appear to be teeth with wings.

Green-Meldrim House is a fine example of Gothic Revival architecture used by Gen. Sherman during the Civil War. Gordonston is a neighborhood dating to 1926 and dedicated to Juliette Gordon Low’s parents.

Juliette made the wrought-iron gates at the park entrance.

The Globe – a fixture at Abercorn Street and Derenne Avenue that’s an old gas tank painted to look like the planet. Below is how it looked in the 1960s.

East Broad Street was home to African American landmarks including the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge and The Melody Theater.

Emmet Park, dedicated to Irish patriot Robert Emmet and honoring Savannah’s Irish heritage.

You can also see the Celtic Cross and monuments to Salzburgers and the Vietnam War dead.

Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin.

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First African Baptist Church, organized in 1773 for black worshippers and served as a meeting place for all during the Civil Rights Movement.

Factor’s Row and Walk are located just above River Street and was the center of commerce in early years.

First Bryan Baptist Church is an African American church organized in 1788 by slave Andrew Bryan.

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Gullah-Geechee – descendants of enslaved Africans whose culture is a hallmark of the Lowcountry.

H

Heat or humidity, take your pick.

Hunter Army Air Field was set in 1929 as a municipal air park, but became a military base in 1940. Now, it’s home to various branches and part of the Army’s Fort Stewart.

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I

Irish settlers came in the 1830s as rail workers and to work other jobs, and their influence lives on.

Ironclad CSS Georgia never fired a shot but was scuttled in the river south of Fort Jackson to stop Union attackers.

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“Jingle Bells,” the Christmas carol, was likely written by James Pierpont Jr. while serving as organist at the city’s Unitarian Universalist Church.

Noble Jones arrived with Gen. Oglethorpe and was the first colonial surveyor. He is best known for establishing Wormsloe Plantation.

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King-Tisdell Cottage is dedicated to the preservation of African American history and culture. It features work by African American Sculptor Ulysses Davis.

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Laurel Grove Cemetery

W.W. Law, 1923-2002, was a mail carrier who led the city’s civil rights work from 1950-1976 as NAACP leader. He was dedicated to African American history and culture in Savannah.

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Sgt. William Jasper, a war hero, participated in the Siege of Savannah in 1779 and was killed during a British attack.

Massie Heritage Center, once Massie School, is now dedicated to preserving and teaching the city’s history.

Fort Jackson watched over the Savannah River, but never saw a shot.

Moss – the draping Spanish moss is a warm climate, flowering plant that grows on our larger trees, giving the area a Southern Gothic quality.

The Jewish population of Congregation Mickve Israel dates to 1733, and is one of the oldest in the United States.

Marshes form our unique transition from the ocean to the mainland, filled with Spartina grasses providing havens for shellfish and other wildlife.

Madeira wine and its trade influenced early Savannah social life and business. The fortified wine was imported as early as the 1760s.

McQueen’s Island Trail, once a railroad route to Tybee, is now a spot to see the marshes, creeks and wildlife on foot or by bike.

Mary Musgrove, daughter of an English trader and a Creek woman, was the interpreter between Tomochichi and Gen. Oglethorpe. She was paid for her work and established at least two trading posts.

Movies - A LOT of your favorites were filmed here., and SCAD’s film festival in the fall is a great place to see future Oscar nominees.

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The Port of Savannah on the Savannah River has been a fixture since the arrival of Oglethorpe and is now one of the nation’s busiest.

Pin Point community on the Moon River was a rural settlement founded by freed slaves after the Civil War. It is the home of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and now hosts a museum honoring the life, work and history of the GullahGeechee community.

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Nathanael Greene was a major general of the Continental Army in the Amercan Revolutionary War but moved to Mulberry Grove Plantation. He is honored in Johnson Square.

North Beach at Tybee Island is known for Fort Screven, the Tybee Island Lighthouse and a great spot to watch ships navigate to and from the Savannah River.

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Flannery O’Connor, 1925-1954, won the National Book Award for Fiction. Her work is revered as an important voice for American and Southern literature.

Olympic torch, a relic from the yachting events for the 1996 Olympic Games, sits riverside in Morrell Park.

Pirates remain part of area lore for stories of Blackbeard, mysterious tunnels and shipping trade.

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Rivers surround us, bringing water from the north and west to the Atlantic. It’s a rare driver who doesn’t cross a bridge to a daily destination.

Railroads to the coastal port made Savannah a bustling town. Early days of the Central of Georgia Railroad are represented at the Georgia State Railroad Museum.

Racing, which came to the area in 1908, set the course for the nation’s love for fast cars in competition. Tracks remain at Roebling Road and Hutchinson Island.

Rice, a staple of coastal diets, was the early cash crop. Today’s Red Rice recipes harken to that age.

Oatland Island Wildlife Center Ossabaw Island sits off the coast as a heritage preserve the natural, scientific and cultural study, research and education.

Oysters, harvested for centuries for food and livelihood, remain a basic of life for the area.

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Tabby concrete, featured in older buildings, uses burned oyster shells to create lime then mixes it with water, sand, ash and broken oyster shells.

Thrills are a sweet icy treat born in Savannah. Eula Mae “Miss Doll’s” original invention has been present in Savannah for more than 80 years.

Turtles - From loggerhead to box, we’ve got our hard-shelled friends. Head to the Tybee Island Marine Center for a closer look.

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Squares, the signatures of Oglethorpe’s city plan, create respites in a busy downtown and influence international urban design today.

Savannah College of Art & Design started from one historic Bull Street building in 1978 and now calls Savannah its home campus with dozens of restored and new buildings throughout the city.

It’s a leading professional art college with more than 40 majors and campuses in France, Hong Kong and Atlanta.

Savannah State University, established in 1890 as Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth, was the state’s first historically black university. It is now a part of the state’s university system.

Sandfly community, once a historic African American community, is now a bustling crossroad of commerce.

Stopover is more than a rest break on I-95. It’s Savannah Stopover, a thriving music festival featuring bands headed to Austin’s South by Southwest gathering.

The historic Starland district is known for its artsyvibe.

Telfair Museums include historic Telfair Academy and Owens-Thomas House, as well as the modern Jepson Center for Contemporary Art. Tugboats are fixtures along the river front as they guide large vessels along the Savannah River to port.

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Uga, the bulldog mascot for the University of Georgia, calls Savannah his home with the Seiler family.

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The Victorian District is Savannah’s first suburb located just south of the Historic District with houses from the 1870s.

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Wormsloe Plantation was settled by Noble Jones on Isle of Hope, and 1.5 mile avenue of live oaks remains an icon of the area. It’s now a state historic site.

Mrs. Wilkes’ Boarding House has lines that stretch down the street for the family-style food that has fed even sitting Presidents.

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Yamacraw Indians were here as Oglethorpe landed. They consisted of 200 and were a mix of Lower Creeks and Yamasees.

The Waving Girl, whose real name was Florence Martus, is a Morrell Park statue greeting ships in the same way Martus did for decades.

Wesley, the brothers Charles and John, came to Savannah at Oglethorpe’s request in 1735. John stayed and Charles went to St. Simons. John, credited with founding Methodism, was heaviliy influenced by the Moravians he met here.

Wisteria’s sweet aroma heralds spring’s full arrival.

Look up in the trees for its lavender blossoms.

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Acknowledgements Chuck Mobley, chief writer, is a native of Charleston, S.C., a Vietnam War veteran and a 1977 graduate of the University of South Carolina. He worked for the Aiken, S.C., Standard and the Warner Robins Daily Sun before moving to Savannah in 1980 to work for the Savannah Morning News. He’s married to Shelly Mobley, an English teacher at Groves High School, and the father of two children, Hallie and Cooper.

Julia Muller, a native Savannahian, is archivist and online producer at the Savannah Morning News. She ardently and unsuccessfully fought for “cat” to represent the letter “C” in this publication.

Steve Bisson is a Savannah native and second generation photojournalist, and has been a photographer for the Savannah Morning News for more than 35 years. He serves as photo chief for the Savannah Morning News/savannahnow.com. He attended the University of Georgia.

Christopher Sweat grew up just west of here in Patterson, but now calls Savannah home. A graduate of UGA and Armstrong, he is the commercial content manager of the Savannah Morning News. He was responsible for the design and layout of Savannah A to Z. Thanks to Lee Sandow and Jennifer Menster for their support and help on deadline.

Publisher Michael C. Traynor Vice President of Audience Steve yelvington Executive Editor Susan Catron

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