Stories Set in Stone

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Savannah and Her Unique Architecture

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Part of the

Savannah Stories Collection of Publications from

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Savannah and Her Unique Architecture

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table of contents 5 INTRODUCTION 6

IN THE BEGINNING

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ARCHITECTURAL STYLES OF SAVANNAH

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CITY HALL

15 ARCHITECT:

WILLIAM GIBBONS PRESTON 19 ARCHITECT:

WILLIAM JAY 23

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: CLERMONT LEE

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THE GREAT FIRE OF 1820

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SAVANNAH GREY BRICKS

29 ARCHITECT:

JOHN NORRIS 33

THE HARPER-FOWLKES HOUSE

34 IRONWORK

cast iron newel of pelicans on taylor street

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THE ARMSTRONG HOUSE (HENRIK WALLEN)

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THE LANE FAMILY RESTORATIONS

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DETAIL ORIENTED: ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS AROUND SAVANNAH

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ARDSLEY PARK & CHATHAM CRESCENT

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BACK TO THE FUTURE

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HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

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HISTORIC SAVANNAH FOUNDATION’S TOP 10 BUILDINGS AND SITES

65 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -4-

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Savannah and Her Unique Architecture

An early view of Savannah from the River.

introduction When I go to a city museum, I always pay close attention because what’s been preserved to show you often signals what’s important to that community. While we have a myriad of wonderful museums housing important pieces of our city, we have one that can’t be contained.

Savannah is our showpiece. From Oglethorpe’s plan for the squares, the lots and the grid, the city’s architecture has become a living urban center with a heart formed of wood, fire, brick and stone.

While portions burned in the early 1800s, most did not. It was spared in the Civil War, unlike other Southern cities its size. The old grid has served well, inspiring others to build and create with respect to the vision and to encourage restoration efforts to continue to save and grow the city’s unique aura.

The buildings, their styles, designers and builders exemplify the diversity of the city’s -5-

beginnings and its future. Savannah is a crossroads of histories, styles and dreams. And those are what you’ll find when you walk the city.

This edition is not intended to be a dictionary or encyclopedia of Savannah’s architecture – there are many that do this very well. It is, we hope, an introduction or reminder of the many, many architects, artists and their stories that will make your next walk around town a little more interesting.

Thank you for reading.

Executive Editor, Savannah Morning News / savannahnow.com

in the beginning...

Gen. James E. Oglethorpe seemingly had a hand in every aspect of Savannah’s early history, including the concept of its street plan, the consultations over who to take to settle it, and the choice of its location. So it was altogether fitting that he also aided in the initial phase of construction.

On March 1, 1733, less than a month after the colonists’ arrival, Oglethorpe ceremoniously drove in the first pin of Savannah’s first house. By June, eight additional framed dwellings, and a smith’s forge, had been built. Shortly thereafter, two blockhouses and a guardhouse added security to the project.

A year later, when Peter Gordon crafted his famed map of the city (above), some 100 acres had been cleared, and Savannah, with the central elements of its plan already clearly delineated, was fast taking shape. Placed on identical 60-feet-wide by 90-feet-deep lots, its first houses were identical as well.

They were simple sawed-timber cottages, measuring 16 feet in width, 24 feet in length and one-and-a-half stories in height. The basic floor plan was one large room in front, two smaller rooms in the rear and a loft or attic above. It was all floored with inch-and-a-half planks, and raised some 2 feet on a log foundation. The pitched roofs were layered with tarred shingles or thatched with palmetto leaves. Insulation?

That would have been straw or marsh grass.

When John Reynolds, the first royal governor of Georgia, landed in Savannah on Oct. 9, 1754, the city had some 150 houses scattered about. It was not a prosperous time – the phrase “poor as a Georgian” was often voiced in neighboring South Carolina – and further proof of the colony’s struggles came a week later when one of the walls at the Council House on present-day Wright Square caved in during a meeting chaired by the new governor.

Fortunately, in the early-1760s, a line of new wharves was built along the waterfront, and the resultant sharp spike in shipping, particularly with ports in the Caribbean, saved the city’s economy. By 1770, six squares – Reynolds, Johnson, Ellis, Oglethorpe, Wright and St. James (now Telfair) – along with their surrounding houses, had been completed.

A spate of construction also added to the city’s appeal.

These newer houses, although not grand, were often painted red or blue, and boasted side piazzas or porches.

Three houses constructed in downtown Savannah around that time are still standing (photos, opposite page, clockwise from top left).

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The Christian Camphor Cottage at

122 E. Oglethorpe St. was built circa-1760 and was raised onto a brick foundation in 1871. It is the only building that dates back to the Revolutionary War era.

The Habersham House, now much better known as the Olde Pink House, was built circa-1789.

The porch was added after the War of 1812, and further renovations were made in the 1870s.

The Spencer-Woodbridge House at 22

Habersham St. was built in 1791.

These three houses are noteworthy because they survived Savannah’s first great disaster, the downtown fire of 1796. It started on the evening of Nov. 26 in the bake house of Mr. Gromet on Market Square and raged for some six hours, fed by wood-shingled rooftops and spread by strong winds from the northeast. When it was over, much of the old town – from Barnard Street in the west, to Abercorn Street in the east, and from Bay Street in the north to the city common on Oglethorpe Avenue in the south – had been leveled. In all, some 229 houses and 146 outbuildings were consumed by the flames.

The Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser reported on Nov. 29 that 375 chimneys were “standing bare” and that some 400 families were homeless.

With the help of builders from the North and Europe, Savannah quickly began to rebuild. In addition, Adrien Boucher, the city’s first trained architect, arrived at about -7-

savannah’s city hall building is a prime example of Beaux Arts Classicism

(continued from previous page)

that time as well. A refugee from the French Revolution, Boucher lived in New York for several years before moving to Savannah, where he sought to create “elegant and strong” buildings.

He is credited with planning the City Exchange, which was initially occupied by commercial tenants and stood on the same site as the present-day City Hall until its destruction in 1904, the Berrien House on Broughton Street and the Houston-Screven House on Abercorn Street, which was demolished in 1920 to make room for the Lucas Theatre.

Boucher worked in Savannah for 10 years or so, but after inviting free African-Americans to the ballroom of his house, ran afoul of the city fathers and left. His place was soon taken by other talented builders and architects, including Isaiah Davenport and William Jay. Largely fueled by cotton exports, Savannah’s building trade surged for several years after the end of the War of 1812, and Jay’s exquisitely styled mansions and public buildings lent a sense of grandeur and prosperity to the city’s streets and squares. It all came apart, however, after a staggering series of disasters – the Panic of 1819, which sent the national and local economies into the tank; the fire of January of 1820, which devoured some 463 buildings in downtown Savannah; and, the most cruel twist of all, the yellow fever epidemic of 1820, which dragged on from May until October and killed more than a 10th of the city’s population.

But, as it had after the fire of 1796, the city recovered and rebounded, using Oglethorpe’s redoubtable plan as its blueprint.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “The Oglethorpe Plan: Enlightenment Design in Savannah and Beyond,” by Thomas D. Wilson; “Savannah in the Time of Peter Tondee,” by Carl Solana Weeks; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Dr. Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; “On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World,” by Paul M. Pressly; “Savannah Architectural Tours,” by Jonathan E. Stalcup; “John Young Noel,” by David M. McCullough Jr., part of the Savannah Biographies held at the Special Collections of Lane Library of Armstrong State University; www.thempc.org; www.savannah.gov; www.loc.gov.

THE OLDE PINK HOUSE IS TRULY GEORGIAN

Architectural Styles Sources: Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “Architecture of the Old South: Georgia,” by Mills Lane; “American Homes: The Landmark Illustrated Encyclopedia of Domestic Architecture, by Lester Walker; “Primary Sources,” a publication of the Massie Heritage Center, Savannah’s Museum for History and Architecture; “Savannah Architectural Tours,” by Jonathan E. Stalcup; “The Savannah College of Art and Design: Restoration of an Architectural Heritage,” by Connie Capozzola Pinkerton and Maureen Burke; City of Savannah Research Library & Municipal Archives.

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a brief history of architectural styles in savannah Greek Revival, 1820-1860: Connected to the culture and virtues of ancient Greece by several design elements, particularly columned porches and pediments, it was the choice of many prominent Savannahians, including Henry McAlpin, whose storied mansion, the Hermitage, stood along the Savannah River from 1820 until 1935, when it was demolished. Example: The Harper Fowlkes House at 230 Barnard St. (center column, below)

Southern Colonial, 1734-1820: Illustrated by simple, narrow wooden houses with two or three rooms on the ground floor, a loft above, and steeply pitched roofs. Example: 426 E. St. Julian St., a colonial-style cottage built for Henry Willink in 1845.

Georgian, 1735-1790: Characterized by symmetrical composition, and enriched by classical details such as Palladian windows, it features a doorway set in a central projecting element.

Example: The house built circa-1789 at 23 Abercorn St. for James Habersham Jr., now the Olde Pink House Restaurant.

Regency, 1811-1830: Championed

by English architect William Jay, this style was opulent, powerful and pricey.

It featured elements of both Roman and Greek architecture, and, in Jay’s hands, was marked by strict symmetry and such sleek innovations as an arched bridge that connects upper-floor rooms.

Example: The Owens-Thomas House Museum at 124 Abercorn St.

Gothic Revival, 1840-1890: Often crowned by battlements or adorned by arches, this luxurious style also brought crenellation to a high level, placed windows in turrets and made extensive use of iron in porches and entrances. John Norris was a master of it in Savannah. Example: The GreenMeldrim House at 14 W. Macon St. is considered one of the finest Gothic Revival residences in the nation.

Federal, 1790-1820: Defined by square or rectangular plain, brick exteriors, with delicate, white painted detailing and artful fanlights over the doorway. Its name reflected America’s newly won independence. Example: The Isaiah Davenport House Museum at 324 E. State St. -9-

Second Empire, 1860-1890: Popularized in France, it emphasized verticality with tall windows, often topped with pediments to lend even more height, and elongated chimneys. Its most distinctive feature was the mansard roof, which stylishly capped the building and added a floor of usable space.

Example: The Hamilton-Turner House (now an inn) on Lafayette Square.

Italianate, 1840-1890: Inspired by the farm houses of northern Italy, this approach is often depicted by wide, overhanging eaves. Generally square in shape, Italianate houses were often decorated with cast-iron porches.

Example: The Mercer-Williams House Museum (above) on Monterey Square, originally designed by John Norris and completed by DeWitt Bruyn.

Sullivanesque, 1890-1920: Named for Chicago architect Louis Sullivan, it represented an early skyscraper design.

The buildings were delineated by specific segments – ground floor, intermediate floors and the roof. A prime Savannah example is the Citizens Bank (now SCAD’s Propes Hall), built in 1895 at the intersection of Drayton and Bryan streets.

Its many features include four porthole windows.

Richardsonian Romanesque, 1840-1900: It featured the classic Roman arch and conveyed a sense of weight and importance with thick entryways and massive masonry walls.

Its primary practitioner in Savannah was the Boston architect William Gibbons Preston. Nationally, it was often used on city halls, schools and libraries. Example: The Savannah Volunteer Guards Armory (now SCAD’s Poetter Hall) on Madison Square.

Queen Anne, 1860-1900: Somewhat similar to Gothic Revival, Queen Anne displayed many asymmetrical decorative touches, including arches, towers, turrets, tall brick chimneys, columns, porthole windows and porches. Alfred S. Eichberg made a number of distinctive Savannah houses in this style. Example: The William Kehoe House (now a bed and breakfast) at 123 Habersham St. - 10 -

Beaux Arts Classicism, 19001920, and Neo Classicism, 1900-1920: Combined in the 1904-1906 construction of Savannah City Hall (opposite page) by architect Hyman W. Witcover, these classical styles share many characteristics, including balustraded balconies, pedimented windows, smooth upper-story masonry walls, a symmetrical façade and a rusticated first story. Originally copper, the building’s distinctive dome has been covered by gold leaf since 1987.

The lady holding a ship stands high on City Hall a few stories above a plaque honoring the S.S. Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. The ship steamed from the City Hall location in 1819. Using steam and sail, The Savannah set a new Atlantic record of twenty-nine and a half days.

city hall Thousands of people pass Savannah City Hall on Bay Street each day, either by vehicle or on foot, but that’s too close and too fast to consider and appreciate the towering Beaux Arts – Italian Renaissance Revival masterpiece conceived and constructed by Hyman Witcover.

To do so, and gain a grasp of its historic context, you’ve got to step back to Johnson Square. From there, its flagdraped, 70-foot-high, gold-leafed dome, perched atop arches, balconies, columns, pilasters, and other architectural and artistic touches comes into focus. It’s still the symbol of strength and stability that the city fathers wanted at the intersection of Bull and Bay streets back in 1903, when they decided to tear down the time-honored, yet tattered City Exchange, and build a new city hall.

The site, at that time, was considered “the financial, political and commercial heart” of the city. The Savannah Morning News, in an article supporting the project, added that it was situated “at the beginning of Savannah’s history,” just yards away from where Gen. James E. Oglethorpe first pitched his tent in 1733.

Mayor Herman Myers and a building committee considered and rejected 14 architectural proposals for a new city hall, and then decided to simply hire an architect and come up with a plan. On May 29, 1903, that responsibility was given to Witcover.

A native of Darlington, S.C., Witcover had moved to Savannah as a teenager to work for prominent architect Alfred S. Eichberg. Witcover opened his own firm in 1900, and one of his earliest projects had been the Sacred Heart Church at Bull and 33rd streets. He put his vision of what the new city - 11 -

hall would look like on display on July 15, 1903, with a large watercolor rendering in the window of a store at Bull Street, near Oglethorpe Avenue.

The proposal, which included four quadrigas – spectacular sculptures of chariots and horses on the corners of the roof – was quickly approved by Myers and the city council. It took a good bit longer, however, to decide on a contractor to turn Witcover’s drawing into city hall.

On March 19, 1904, the mayor and council approved the bid of the Savannah Contracting Co. The sequence, however, involved what today might be referred to as “fuzzy math.”

With a bid of $205,500 from an out-of-town company on the floor, the mayor opened the bid from Savannah Contracting, and called out that it was for $205,767, higher than the other possibility. But, the mayor declared a moment later that he wasn’t sure if “this figure is a 7 or a 1.” After some discussion, it was decided that it was a 1, and the bid of $205,167 was accepted.

From there, it took about a week for workmen to start tearing down the circa-1799 City Exchange. On Aug. 11, 1904, Savannah laid the cornerstone of its new city hall with great ceremony. A parade of some 2,000 men marched from Forsyth Park to the site. There, an estimated 12,000 to 20,000 people gathered, in part because the mayor had asked that businesses close that afternoon to allow workers to attend.

A 1903 watercolor rendering of what the new City Hall building was to look like. Note the chariot statuary on the roof, which did not make the budgetary cut.

Courtesy of City of Savannah, Research Library & Municipal Archives

Savannah’s city seal is embossed on brass doorknob plates entering the City Council chambers.

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present day city hall at two east bay street

Above, laying the cornerstone for Savannah’s new City Hall, August 11, 1904. Below, the rotunda.

(City Hall, continued)

The Masonic ceremony included speeches, prayers and a quartet singing “America.” Witcover himself lowered the cornerstone into place.

The worksite became a popular gathering spot as the city watched the building slowly take shape. On Nov. 29, 1904, two 11-ton limestone columns arrived from a quarry in New Bedford, Ind. They were eventually lifted onto six-foot-high pedestals in the building’s recessed second-floor balcony.

In September of 1905, as the project neared its end, Witcover decided on the designs of sculptor Carl William Winstedt for the 10-foot-high limestone statues of Art and Commerce on another balcony. Winstedt’s proposal was chosen over that of John Walz, the Savannah sculptor whose many works included “Little Gracie” at Bonaventure Cemetery. The city paid $2,800 for the statues, which were lifted into place by a special derrick designed by Winstedt.

As for the quadrigas, the sculptures of chariots and horses proposed for the corners of the roof, they did not make it into the budget for the next year, as was discussed by the city hall building committee, or any year after that.

In October of 1905, the two bells in the city hall tower were tolled for the first time in the manner they would be when the clock was installed and operating the bells. “The chimes first heralded the ringing of the hour bell, and the music from their brazen throats was loud and true,” according to an article in the Savannah Morning News. “Then the deep-throated booming of the big bell which will toll off the hours counted out twelve periods of time. The chimes were

pronounced by those who heard them to be unusually clear and sweet, and many stopped in their walk to listen to the unusual sound.”

Finally, on Dec. 21, 1905, Mayor Myers moved into his new office, and the flag was hoisted over the 1,800-square-foot copper dome at 10:40 a.m. Robert Schneider, keeper of the city clocks, rang the bells to announce the event. (Gold leaf was first applied on the dome in 1987, and reapplied in 2008.)

Two opening receptions, one in the afternoon, the other in the evening, brought some 10,000 citizens into the new city hall on Jan. 2, 1906. Mayor Myers made a special effort to speak with the children who attended, and he also purchased a gift for the adults – small trays with a reproduction of city hall on them.

For Hyman Witcover (1871-1936), the new city hall was one of his many accomplishments in Savannah. His other buildings included the Chatham Armory at Bull Street and Park Avenue (now American Legion Post 135), the Jewish Educational Alliance on Barnard Street (now a SCAD residence hall), Congregation B’nai B’rith Jacob’s Synagogue on Montgomery Street (now a SCAD student center) and the Bull Street Library. An active and influential Mason, Witcover designed the Scottish Rite Masonic Center on Madison Square, and also worked on the designs of temples in Jacksonville, Fla., Jackson, Miss., and Montgomery, Ala. Sources: Savannah Morning News files; City of Savannah Research Library & Municipal Archives; “Historic American Buildings Survey: America’s City Halls”; “The Savannah College of Art and Design: Restoration of an Architectural Heritage,” by Connie Capozzola Pinkerton and Maureen Burke.

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THE SAVANNAH COTTON EXCHANGE BUILDING

Features of the Cotton Exchange Building, designed by William Gibbons Preston, at 100 East Bay Street. Below, a photograph of the Cotton Exchange from 1905.

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ARCHITECT

william gibbons preston Working from his office in Boston, architect William Gibbons Preston changed the character of Savannah in the late 19th century, strengthening his block-size signature structures with dramatic exterior colors and artful terra cotta accents, a commanding contrast to the city’s then-standard palate of stucco and grey brick facades.

Initially an architectural student at Harvard, Preston (1842-1910) also worked in his father’s Boston architectural firm, and then studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.

He returned to the United States, resumed working with his father in 1861, and recorded a long list of architectural accomplishments in Boston and New England, including the Rogers Building for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (the first professional school of architecture in America), the First Corps of Cadets Armory and the Boston Society of Natural History Museum.

Preston was a master of the Richardsonian Romanesque Style. With its reliance on the classic Roman arch, thick entryways and massive masonry walls, Richardson Romanesque was a popular choice in the last quarter of the 1800s for large public buildings such as courthouses, schools, libraries and train stations. Its grand entrance to Savannah came in 1886-87 with Preston’s plans for the Cotton Exchange on Bay Street.

His was one of 16 designs submitted in response to an ad in the American Architect and Building News. Preston traveled to Savannah in March of 1886, explained his proposal to the competition committee, and was soon proclaimed the winner. Work on the building started in June of 1886.

A brick-iron-and-glass symbol of cotton’s resurrection as Savannah’s cash crop, the structure was meant to impress.

Its three stories made it the tallest structure on the riverfront,

and Preston’s building materials and stylistic touches made it the most prominent.

He used hard red bricks on the Bay Street exterior rather than the tradition Savannah greys. The iron work for its connecting bridge was done by the Boston Bridge Co. A Massachusetts architect and interior designer helped fashion the interior, which featured stained glass and delicate woodwork. The terra cotta work, all done by the Boston Terra Cotta Co. and shipped south, was the crowning touch.

the original county courthouse on wright square Preston quickly built on the success of the Cotton Exchange, winning contracts to build a new Chatham County Courthouse and to rebuild Independent Presbyterian Church.

Made with yellow bricks, the courthouse featured new touches, particularly the battered granite foundation at its base and the small, corbelled turrets at its top. The church,

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largely destroyed by fire in 1889, was taken down to its foundation, and then restored to its original 1819 appearance.

Throughout these, and his other major Savannah projects, Preston rarely appeared in Savannah. The city’s port and rail facilities allowed him to easily ship specific building materials, such as hard northern bricks, Terra Cotta trim and Massachusetts granite, to the work sites, and Preston hired local architects to follow his detailed plans.

DeWitt Bruyn, whose Savannah accomplishments included the Chatham County Jail on Habersham Street and the William Kehoe House on Columbia Square, helped shepherd the Cotton Exchange. Henry Urban, whom Preston had met in Paris, became his point man on the Independent Presbyterian Church effort and the DeSoto Hotel on Madison Square.

Preston’s grandest Savannah accomplishment, the DeSoto represented Savannah’s new presence as a tourist stop for Florida-bound travelers. It was built in the usual Richardsonian Romanesque grandeur, with a few Queen Anne touches thrown in. His proposal, as presented to a building committee in 1888, called for a 200-room, $250,000 hotel. It eventually cost $410,000 to construct, covered 10 city building lots, opened on New Year’s Day 1890, and was proclaimed “the chief ornament of the city.”

Its six stories were filled with a staggering list of amenities – a tavern with an 11-piece orchestra, an 18-hole miniature golf course, solariums, barbershop, drug store, lunchrooms, coffee shops, beauty parlor, steam baths, tennis court, swimming pool and rotunda. (The DeSoto was demolished in the 1960s.)

In 1892, Preston began work on his last major Savannah building, the Savannah Volunteer Guards Armory. Built on the opposite side of Madison Square from the DeSoto, the Armory was a replacement for another Volunteer Guards building that was destroyed in the downtown fire of 1889.

When finished in 1894, the three-story Armory covered 36,248 square feet and contained a drill hall and clubhouse, a bowling alley/rifle range and a library, better known as the Tomochichi Room because it contained a low-relief plaster likeness of the famed chief in a mantel over the fireplace. (Purchased by the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1979, the Armory is now known as Poetter Hall.)

One of Preston’s most important conduits to the business community in Savannah throughout his building ventures was George Baldwin, the first president of the Savannah Electric and Power Co., and one of the 140 men who held a seat on the Savannah Cotton Exchange. Their first correspondence occurred in 1885, and Preston completed Baldwin’s Hall Street palace in 1890. Complete with a circular reception nook, stained glass windows and transoms, and considerable built-in furniture, it cost more to construct than did the Cotton Exchange.

Baldwin marked the event with a house party for some 350 guests, complete with a band, food and wine selection that had been shipped down on a chartered steamer from New York. The house, located just a block from Forsyth Park, remains one of Savannah’s premier private residences.

RESIDENCE, 200 BLOCK OF EAST HALL STREET

Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “The Savannah College of Art and Design: Restoration of an Architectural Heritage,”

by Connie Capozzola Pinkerton and Maureen Burke; “Lost Savannah: Photographs From the Collection of The Georgia Historical Society,” by Luciana M. Spracher; “Savannah Architectural Tours,” by Jonathan E. Stalcup; “Biography of Henry Urban, Architect, 1848-1927,” by Michael Barker, part of the Savannah Biographies held at the Special Collections of Lane Library of Armstrong State University; ecollections.scad.edu; and architecturalstyles.org.

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SAVANNAH VOLUNTEER GUARDS ARMORY BUILDING, NOW SCAD’S POETTER HALL

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SCARBROUGH HOUSE, NOW THE SHIPS OF THE SEA MUSEUM

SAVANNAH'S ARCHITECT

WILLIAM JAY

By John Duncan with Sandra Underwood By the late 1820s, Savannah had gained notice as a place of architectural distinction. It was, according to a visitor in 1828, “the showy town of Savannah.” Four years later, another visitor described a number of charming private residences as “truly little palaces.”

These impressions of Savannah endure. For many tourists, the reason to come to this place is to see the remarkable display of architecture. But, what few visitors realize is that the initial effort to make this city beautiful can be credited to one person, a young English architect named William Jay. In December 1817, Jay stepped off a ship from Liverpool and walked up the bluff into Savannah. He was 25, just at the beginning of his career. Shortly after he arrived, he wrote an article for a local newspaper to announce his professional credentials and offer his services to the citizens of the town. He was, he said, not “a mechanical builder,” but “an architect” who had been trained in the “science” and the “art” of architecture.

In this article, Jay observed that the existing buildings in Savannah were deficient in several aspects. There was, he said, a lack of understanding of the “true principles” of fine architecture, resulting in a display of “unconnected parts,” and ornament applied in “tawdry profusion.” But he was ready to remedy this regrettable situation by “the union of taste and knowledge.” It was his desire to make Savannah beautiful.

In the course of little more than four years, Jay completed an astonishing number of projects. His goal, as he reported to a London art journal in 1819, was to raise “public buildings” in Savannah – these would show the importance of the town

in commerce and culture. These structures included a theater, a custom house, a bank, a school for indigent children, and perhaps a hotel.

He also raised several grand homes, four of which were distinguished for their plans and finishes: the Richardson House (the Owens-Thomas House, property of the Telfair Museum of Art), the Scarbrough House (the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum), the Telfair House (the Telfair Museum of Art) and the Bulloch House (later the Bulloch-Habersham House, lost to “progress” when it was demolished in 1916).

The style of these structures is now known as Regency – Jay took his training in London at the time of the reign of the Prince Regent. In its day, the style was called “Grecian,” based on the rediscovery of ancient Greek monuments by English scholars and artists in the mid-18th century. The goal of the Grecian style was to achieve a refined classicism for a new age.

Jay’s version of this style is characterized by elegance and ingenuity. In 1944 the architectural historian Talbot Hamlin described Jay’s work in Savannah as the result of “almost perfect taste.” But this perfection came at a cost.

Jay worked best when the budget was not constrained. The materials he used were of the finest quality and imported from England. From London, he secured marble mantelpieces from the workshop of a master sculptor, along with Coade stone (baked ceramic) balusters and column capitals, and superior formulations of paints and stuccos. Unique cast iron balconies, railings and fencing likely came from the foundries of Liverpool.

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By early 1820, Jay’s costs, and a withering national economy, took a toll on his prospects. In January of that year, a great fire decimated the business district of Savannah. Jay advanced a proposal to rebuild the area with fireproof construction, methods he knew well from his London training. But that plan failed for want of funds.

Looking for new opportunities, in December 1819 Jay was appointed to an unsalaried position as architect to the S.C. Board of Public Works, providing stock designs for country courthouses and jails. He opened an office in Charleston in 1820, proposing a design for “a series of Buildings” at City Square (now Washington Square).

That plan was unsuccessful, but he did gain the contract for the S.C. Academy of Fine Arts. He won commissions for a few residences in Charleston, but his success was limited by the affection Charlestonians had for the 18th-century Georgian style and established house plans (the single house and the double house). And perhaps the citizens of Charleston were put off by Jay’s need for exceedingly generous budgets.

In early 1822, Jay may have been seeking work in Washington City (Washington, D.C.), but his manner of establishing contact with President James Monroe, whom he had met in Savannah in May 1819, was impolitic.

Bidden or unbidden, Jay had sent Monroe plans for a country house that the president was building at Oak Hill in Virginia. In May 1822, Jay sent Monroe a bill for those drawings. Monroe was surprised – and he was not amused.

By late 1822, Jay was back in Bath, planning to return to the United States. But he did not return. Perhaps because in Bath his mother had fallen ill. Perhaps because in Charleston Jay had collided with Robert Mills, the self-appointed “first American architect” – Mills had trained in the Philadelphia office of Benjamin Latrobe and studied the “art” of architecture by reading books in the library of President Thomas Jefferson.

Jay may have realized that he could not win in the increasingly noisy campaign to foster an authentic American style of architecture, a difficult contest for a young English architect trained in the high style of the Regency.

In England, Jay made his way to Cheltenham, the newly fashionable spa destination not far from Bath. A building frenzy was in progress, and he accomplished a number of projects, most of them terraces or row houses built on speculation, always marked by his gift for inventive design and fine detail. But the national economy collapsed in 1825, and by 1828 Jay was forced into bankruptcy, a grave circumstance under British law.

The matter was resolved after three years of difficult negotiations, but Jay would struggle to advance future projects on credit.

In 1836, he gained an appointment as assistant civil architect and inspector of works, a civil service position, on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. This was an important colonial holding, which the British had snatched from the French in 1810 to secure the safe transport of goods from India.

With a wife, two small children and a baby, Jay arrived in May 1836.

Immediately he came into a fierce load of work and a salary much too small to support his family. Then, just three months later, his eldest son “Little Willy” died, at only 6 years old, the victim of a tropical disease. Eight months later, in April 1837, Jay died of an unnamed fever. He was buried beside his son in the Western Cemetery just outside the capitol city of Port Louis.

Jay has long been something of an enigma in architectural history.

Just who was this gifted young English architect? Where and how was he trained? And, most curious of all, why did he venture to Savannah?

When he arrived here in late 1817, he was one of only a very few trained architects in the United States, and the only one in the South. His preparation for work had come in London in a long apprenticeship in the office of an architect/surveyor, and by participating in programs of the

Royal Academy. Further, he had grown up in Bath, a planned urban center with distinctive buildings, known then, as now, as the most beautiful city in England.

From his training in London, Jay understood architecture to be a fine art, based on “the pure Greek style,” but made new by the exercise of creativity – to copy was an abomination. The goal was to design modern structures of harmonious proportions and refined ornament.

And, why did Jay come to Savannah? As it happens, from his childhood Jay had heard stories of the founding of Georgia. Jay was the first son and namesake of perhaps the most famous preacher of the day in England.

The Rev. William Jay was the son of a stone mason in Tisbury, Wiltshire.

At the age of 13, he was apprenticed to his father. In the following year, he attended a gathering of Methodists in his village. His response to the evangelical fervor was noticed, and he was selected to train for that ministry.

Billy Jay the Boy Preacher debuted at the age of 19 before a congregation of 2,000 in Surrey Chapel, London’s largest nonconformist meeting hall. Two years later, he accepted a call to an independent chapel in Bath. He would spend the rest of his very long life as the Dissident Divine of Bath, with terms of several weeks each summer at Surrey Chapel.

In London, he spoke to enormous crowds of politicians and lawyers,

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the owens-thomas house - 21 -

These two pages: the Owens-Thomas house, designed by William Jay, is considered by architectural historians to be one of the finest examples of English Regency architecture in America. The house is now part of the Telfair Museums and is available for tours.

bankers and businessmen, writers and artists, churchmen of all ranks and denominations, and even the occasional odd royal.

Jay’s father was trained in the academy of Cornelius Winter, who had come to Georgia in 1769 as an assistant to George Whitefield, the great evangelist of the age, and the founder of the orphanage of Bethesda just outside Savannah.

Winter’s task was to teach slaves to read and to prepare for the establishment of a black church. He was supported in that enterprise by the Habershams and the Boltons, whose descendants would come to be patrons of Jay’s art. Winter played an important role in the lives of the Rev. Jay, his wife, and his six children; and he spoke to them often of his fondness for Georgia.

In 1814, young William Jay opened an office in London and began the work of entering design competitions to establish his practice. Bids for an assembly hall in Liverpool and a theater in London both failed for want of influential patrons – here Jay learned hard lessons about the politics of architecture. His one success, gained through the grace of his father, was the Albion Chapel in London, a large meeting house for a congregation of Presbyterian Seceders.

This group was often allied with other nonconformists to advance evangelical initiatives, including abolition and the establishment of foreign missions.

By 1816, family circumstances presented a new option for Jay. In 1811, his eldest sister Anne had married Robert Bolton, whose great-grandfather and grandfather had been followers of Whitefield, and whose father had established a prosperous cotton house in Savannah. Bolton had gone to England in 1808 to study for the ministry, where he sought the counsel of the Rev. Jay and won Anne’s heart.

In 1816, he was obliged to take up the work of the Liverpool branch of the Savannah cotton house. This placed him in regular communication with friends and business associates from Savannah, including Richard Richardson, a partner in the cotton trade. That same year, Richardson secured from Jay plans for his own house in Savannah. No doubt he suggested to Jay that abundant work might be found in that city.

Richardson was associated with at least three important projects: a theater, which Jay had recently designed for a London site; a bank, of which Richardson was president; and a church, the Independent Presbyterian Church, for which Jay would prepare a drawing, but not secure the commission.

Jay achieved a number of successes in the course of his career. But there was no place more congenial for him as an artist than Savannah. Here, men of considerable wealth and ambition placed their trust in Jay’s vision and talent and made it possible for him to realize what is now understood to be his finest work. Jay’s labors brought distinction to Savannah and provided models of the art of architecture that influenced the work of others in this place for many decades to follow.

Sources: Books, journals, newspaper articles and letters; images, including maps and original art; and records gathered in the libraries and archives of Bath, Cheltenham and London, England; Port Louis, Mauritius; New York, New York; Washington, D.C.; Charleston and Columbia, S.C.; Atlanta, Morrow and Savannah, Ga. These materials form the William Jay Archives of the V & J Duncan Collection, Savannah.

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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT

CLERMONT LEE From her first job beautifying Depression-era housing projects, to saving downtown squares from bus traffic, to designing gardens for the Isaiah Davenport House and other noted structures, lauded landscape architect Clermont Lee gradually staked out a lasting legacy in the historic district.

Born in 1914 in Savannah, she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Smith College and worked for the Sea Island Co. before opening her own landscape architecture practice in her hometown in 1949. Over the next 50 years, she worked with Mills B. Lane Jr. and others on projects at many prominent local sites, including the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, the Andrew Low House, the Scarbrough House, the Green-Meldrim House and Fort Pulaski National Monument.

In the 1950s, she adamantly opposed a proposal to place drive-thru lanes in several squares for ambulances, fire trucks, police cars, other emergency vehicles and buses. Instead, the city chose to follow her suggestion to simply round the curves of entry. Lee also convinced the city to remove utility poles and concrete walks that were diminishing the appeal of the squares.

Lee also, over a 20-year-period, teamed with Lane to improve the Northeast Quadrant of the Historic District.

Those efforts included designing private gardens and enhancing Greene and Washington squares.

Her English-inspired parterre garden at the OwensThomas House, completed in 1954, fits seamlessly into the context of that National Historic Landmark.

Those, and her many other accomplishments, she told

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columnist Jane Fishman in a 1992 Savannah Morning News article, resulted from a lucky guess. Lee decided to major in landscape architecture because “I didn’t see anything I could pass until I spotted (that major) in the catalog. It was a gamble.”

A student at the Pape School, and a graduate of the oh-so genteel Ashley Hall boarding school in Charleston, where the girls wore white gloves and could not go to town without an escort, Lee moved to New York City in 1932. It was an exciting time to live there, she told Fishman, recalling Katherine Hepburn movies, stores that sold liquor during Prohibition, and “short, stocky” men that wore derbies.

She enjoyed living in the North so much that she stayed an additional three-and-a-half years to attend graduate school.

She graduated in 1939, and, upon moving back to Savannah, became the first female landscape architect in the state.

In 1940, she supervised landscape projects at Fellwood Homes and Yamacraw Village. From that start, working through six decades, she amassed an astonishing architectural record. The Clermont Huger Lee architectural drawing and negatives collection at the Georgia Historical Society largely chronicles her career. It lists many private homes, of course, along with doctors’ offices, churches, cemetery lots, charitable organizations, industries and at least one bar, the old Night Flight on River Street.

Lee retired in 1999, and died in 2006 at age 92.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society documents; www.telfair.org.

the great fire of 1820 Fueled in part by the usual combustibles, wooden roofs and buildings, and further energized by an unusual propellant, illegally stored gunpowder in City Market, the fire of Jan. 11, 1820, simply decimated downtown Savannah. Every building between Broughton and Bay streets, from Jefferson to Abercorn streets, was destroyed, except for the State and Planter’s banks, the Episcopal church and three other brick buildings.

“The town presents a most wretched picture,” according to a letter in the newspaper. “There is no estimating the loss – it is immense.” Another report added that “many hundreds of families are literally naked in the streets; not even clothing was saved.”

Citing “a calamity unexampled in the annals of this nation,” Savannah Mayor Thomas U.P. Charlton sent a national appeal for relief for the city’s “distressed and suffering people.” The response was immediate. In all, $99,451.75 in cash, along with considerable products and goods, was sent. One donation, however, came with a controversial string attached to it.

New York sent a generous amount, $12,000, but stipulated that it be applied to the relief of all indigent persons, “without distinction of color.” The year 1820 was also the year of the Missouri Compromise, and the discussion over the donation came amid the first flush of serious sectional dissension over slavery.

An indignant Savannah sent the money back: The needy, both black and white, had been the first to receive relief, the Savannah Republican pointed out.

Still, the other donations, including $12,000 from Boston and $10,000 from Philadelphia, were spurring rebuilding efforts. In the spirit of the occasion, the Savannah Volunteers Guards rendered a toast on May 1 – “Our city, Rising like a Phoenix from its ashes, may she continue to rise until she rivals in splendor her sister cities of the North.”

That same month, three yellow fever deaths were recorded in the northeast quadrant of Savannah. Before the epidemic ended in October, more than 660 people, roughly a 10th of the city’s population, had died.

Once the city had recovered from that catastrophe, subsequent revitalization efforts were thwarted by a stagnant national economy, and then further hampered by an 1833 railroad line that connected Augusta and Charleston. Georgia upland cotton had become a cash crop for South Carolina.

Finally, in 1843, the Central of Georgia Railroad completed its 190-mile route from Macon to Savannah. Between then and the start of the Civil War, some 75 percent of its revenues came from hauling cotton from upland Georgia plantations to Savannah to be loaded on ships and exported. Its cars also carried the full-fledged arrival of the long-stalled recovery.

Architects John Norris and Charles B. Cluskey were among the newcomers to Savannah during that era. Norris designed the U.S. Custom House on Bay Street, a four-years-in-the-making Greek

Revival masterpiece that led to numerous other projects for him in the city. Cluskey, who had also sought the Custom House contract, contributed the Greek Revival Champion mansion on Orleans Square and three brick, barrel-vaulted storerooms under the bluff between Bay Street and the Savannah River.

This antebellum growth spurt faithfully followed Gen. James E. Oglethorpe’s plan. The city’s blueprint burgeoned from 15 squares in 1815, to 18 in 1841, to the final figure of 24 in 1856.

The attendant new streets, delineated by the narrow lots that Oglethorpe had dictated more than a century earlier, were soon fronted by tall row houses.

The houses, and many other downtown buildings, were generally constructed with Savannah grey bricks, kilned at the Hermitage Plantation, an industrial plantation some three miles upriver from city hall. There, Henry McAlpin made bricks by the thousands, and also operated a foundry and a lumber mill.

A tree-lined urban park, conceived by William Brown Hodgson, configured by landscape architect William Christian Bischoff, and crowned by a water-spurting fountain in 1858, lent a sense of European sophistication to the city.

Distinctive houses, such as the Gothic Revival mansion for Charles Green on Madison Square, and the Italianate mansion being built on Monterey Square by John Norris, added to Savannah’s splendor.

The Savannah Morning News, in 1854, stated that “the busy marts and crowded streets bespeak the city’s prosperity. Its lines of deeply-laden ships and splendid steamers, and the daily arriving and departing lengthened railroad trains attest to its wealth.”

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “Architecture of the Old South: Georgia,” by Mills Lane; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Dr. Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; www. savannahga.gov; www.chsgeorgia.org.

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almost 200 years after the great fire, savannah is growing and thriving.

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savannah grey bricks Produced at several different locations from a distinctive strand of Georgia clay, the Savannah grey brick is the subtly-hued vein that connects the nation’s first railroad, the construction of Fort Pulaski, automobile magnate Henry Ford, and mid-20th-century suburban development as it runs through the long, complicated course of this city’s history.

Millions of them were made, and much of that by slave labor, but their connection to the city dates back to the 1730s, almost 20 years before slavery was legal in the colony. It was in those early years, when Gen. James E. Oglethorpe was still in command, that a layer of iron-carbonate clay was discovered along the bluff of the Savannah River, adjacent to Trustees Garden. The first Savannah bricks, long before the term Savannah greys came into vogue, were baked in ovens there.

By the late 1790s, production had shifted some three miles upriver to a small, struggling plantation. First deeded to Joseph Ottolenghe in 1750, it was then called Exon, and was likely planted in mulberry trees. Ottolenghe was for a brief time in charge of the colony’s silk industry.

In 1763, the plantation came into the possession of Capt.

Patrick Mackay. Its name was also changed, to the Hermitage.

In 1798, after several ownership changes caused by the uncertainties of the Revolutionary War, the Hermitage was purchased by Samuel Wall. Less than a year later, he put it up for sale. His advertisement in the Georgia Gazette turned out to be a harbinger of the plantation’s future: “If not sold within eight days, advantageous terms will be given to any person,

well recommended, who is well acquainted with the making of bricks, having eight or ten hands to carry on that business at the Hermitage, having good clay and large bodies of wood contiguous to it.”

Eventually, in 1815, William I. Scott bought the Hermitage for $1,500. But, that transaction was actually made for Scott’s good friend Henry McAlpin, a recent Scottish immigrant who was not yet a citizen, and who thus could not legally own land in Georgia. Soon McAlpin, with the assistance of Scott, expanded the size of the Hermitage to more than 200 acres.

An 1819 map of the property showed that it was not the typical Savannah River rice plantation, but was rather an industrial complex with some fields for cultivation, along with a saw mill, clay pits, brick kilns and wharfs. McAlpin was thus perfectly poised to take advantage of a business opportunity that arose out of a Savannah tragedy, the fire of 1820.

It began at 2 a.m. on Jan. 11 in a livery stable near City Market, burned until 2 p.m., and consumed a huge swath of downtown. From Jefferson Street to Abercorn Street, and from Broughton Street to Bay Street, virtually every house was destroyed. In all, an estimated 400 buildings went up in smoke.

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Ramsey Khalidi, president of Southern Pine Company, stands in front of pallets of Savannah Grey bricks in the storage yard.

Above, the main house at the Hermitage, circa 1907. Below, slave cabins at the Hermitage, 1935, (Library of Congress/Walker Evans)

A city ordinance, passed a short time later, mandated that subsequent downtown construction was to be of brick, rather than wood. It thus got real busy at the Hermitage.

The brick-making process called for the distinctive clay to be mixed with sand and then pressed into wooden molds. Once dried, the bricks were stacked in one of the two massive Hermitage kilns and fired, and from there taken to the wharfs and sent downriver. To keep up those kilns running at maximum capacity and maximum speed, McAlpin built the first railroad in the United States.

Pulled by horses, the railroad stretched on iron rails between the kilns.

It carried a large hut, or house, with a pitched roof. Securely based on a four-wheeled platform, this contraption was placed over the kiln while it was being filled with bricks, and removed when the kiln was fired.

The bricks, when they came out of the kilns, did so in different hues, generally ranging from light brown to salmon. That variation depended on the amount of sand mixed in, the amount of iron present in the clay, the temperature in the kiln, the positioning of bricks, and the length of time the kiln was fired. There were also differences in size, although a good general description would be two inches in height, four inches in width and eight inches in length.

The Savannah greys, though not uniform, soon became ubiquitous.

From the reconstruction after the fire of 1820, through several subsequent antebellum expansions of the city boundaries, Savannah greys went into an estimated 1,000 buildings in downtown Savannah. Those projects included the U.S. Custom House, Massie Common School, the two Central of Georgia Railroad arches over Boundary Street, Trinity United Methodist Church, First African Baptist Church, hundreds of private residences, and, of course, the Hermitage, the storied home Henry McAlpin built just off the Savannah River.

Not all of those Savannah greys came from McAlpin’s plantation. Some of the other sources included: • South Carolina. A May of 1843 advertisement in the Savannah Daily Republican listed “35,000 hard grey bricks” being landed from a schooner and being sold at 150 Bay St. • The Eastside. A June of 1846 advertisement in the Savannah Daily Republican listed “grey and hard brown bricks for sale to suit purchasers.

Apply at Brickyard on the Thunderbolt Road, or to H. Ganahl.” A later ad mentioned that this brickyard was “one and a half miles” from Savannah.

• The Ogeechee Canal. A January of 1851 article in the Savannah Daily Republican touted the recent accomplishments of the Savannah Patent Brick Co. Its location near a lock afforded “clay of a superior quality” and “an ample supply of firewood.” The addition of this operation was welcomed by the editor because the demand for bricks was “immense.”

Still, the Hermitage remained the acknowledged leader in the industry, even after the 1851 death of Henry McAlpin. With the business in the hands of his sons, the power and prestige of the Hermitage was clearly visible in a June of 1856 advertisement in the Savannah Georgian and Journal that boasted of “1,000,000 grey bricks, best quality, for sale. Apply to A. (Angus) McAlpin & Bros. Williamson’s buildings.”

A million bricks seems like an astonishing number, until it’s placed in the context of a single Savannah construction project, that of Fort Pulaski, which started in 1829, was completed in 1847, and required the purchase of some 25 million bricks. Most of the bricks were Savannah greys kilned at the Hermitage, but rose-red bricks, thought to be harder, were shipped down from Maryland and Virginia and placed in arches and embrasures.

But Pulaski’s brick walls, though they ranged from 5-feet to 11-feet thick, did not deter Union rifled artillery in 1862, and, after Northern soldiers plundered the Hermitage plantation in 1864, the McAlpin family - 27 -

decided to make its home downtown.

An April of 1867 advertisement in the Savannah Daily News and Herald summed up the plantation’s fate: “Pasturage – for stock of all descriptions, at the Hermitage, three miles from the city. Also, for let or lease the Brick Yards attached to same, with two permanent kilns, capacity 200,000 bricks each, and clay inexhaustible.”

Another business, the Lovell Brick Co., located on Louisville Road, manufactured Savannah greys from 1885 to 1910. With its closure, production of the traditional-style Savannah greys came to an end. But, they would eventually make a couple of comebacks.

In the mid-1930s, as the Civilian Conservation Corps was restoring Fort Pulaski, the call went out for 200,000 Savannah greys, necessary to repair crumbling sections. During that same era, attention was focused on the old Hermitage plantation as well.

The McAlpin family made a brief return to the mansion in the 1890s, but after a few years returned for good to their home on Orleans Square. In 1933, descendants of the slaves that had worked the kilns still lived in what had been the slave quarters, matching rows of small, simple three-room houses made of Savannah grey bricks. Famed WPA photographer Walker Evans took photographs of a line of these cabins.

Other structures, including the kitchen, smoke house, stables, hospital and the long-unused brick kilns, were still standing, but would not be for long. By Feb. 28, 1935, the land had been purchased by the Savannah Ports Authority, and several months later was transferred to the Union Bag and Paper Corp. of Georgia.

Construction of a paper mill quickly followed.

As for the Hermitage, the stately Greek Revival home of the McAlpin family for some four decades, Henry Ford purchased it in 1935 for $10,000. A brief effort to save it from destruction, headlined by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, failed, and the mansion was disassembled and moved to Ford’s estate in Bryan County. In 1936-38, a new, restyled Greek Revival mansion was built with those old Savannah greys, and became the residence for Ford and his wife when they wintered in the area.

In the 1950s, interest in Savannah greys again spiked, sparked by their availability as antebellum buildings downtown were being demolished. Local auto dealer Dale Critz built a home on Abercorn Street using bricks taken from the old Savannah Theatre.

A number of homes in the circa 1950-60 Fairway Oaks – Greenview Subdivision were made with Savannah greys.

Another cache, this one in 1981 of 25,000 Savannah greys razed from a building in the police barracks, sold for $51 per thousand.

By 1982, when the old TPA garage on Johnson Square was dismantled grey brick by grey brick, the going rate was $1,500 per thousand.

Earlier this year, when Ramsey Khalidi, owner of Southern Pine Co., put 10,000 Savannah greys up for sale, the asking price had gone up considerably, as in $3 to $4 per brick. “I’ve been collecting these for years,” said Khalidi, who doesn’t just talk about recycling, he lives it. His headquarters, the circa-1920s old Star Laundry on East 35th Street, has stacks of rescued lumber inside and stacks of Savannah greys outside in a rear courtyard.

Khalidi decided to sell the 10,000 Savannah greys to a familiar customer, Fort Pulaski. They will be used for restructure and replacement throughout the fortification. The price? $2.50 a brick.

“They’re a public, nonprofit. It was the right thing to do,” said Khalidi.

Above, a stack of Savannah grey bricks. Below, a house made of Savannah grey bricks at 3208 Abercorn Street. The bricks were taken from the old Savnnah Theatre.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “Behind the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery,” by John Michael Vlach; “Savannah River Plantations: Photographs From the Collection of the Georgia Historical Society,”

by Frank T. Wheeler; “The Hermitage Plantation,” by the Savannah Unit of the Georgia Writers’ Project, Work Projects Administration in Georgia, Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 27; “A Biography of James Wallace McAlpin,” by Brett M. Campbell, part of the Savannah Biographies held at the Special Collections of Lane Library of Armstrong State University; editions of the Savannah Daily Republican, Savannah Georgian and Journal and Savannah Daily News and Herald pulled from savnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu; National Historic Register Nomination Form for Fairway Oaks – Greenview subdivisions; www.southernpinecompany.com; www. savannahga.gov; www.nps.gov; www.loc.gov; fordplantation.com.

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the massie school

ARCHITECT

john norris The bell atop Massie School first called students to class in 1856. Today, its peal is still heard occasionally across Calhoun Square, and the venerable structure is the oldest public school in continuous operation in Georgia.

It was designed by John Norris, an architect with a long list of Savannah accomplishments. He used Savannah grey bricks in its construction in the Greek Revival style. An advertisement in the Sept. 12, 1856, edition of the Savannah Daily Morning News set forth the school’s basic parameters: “It will accommodate 300 pupils: 200 of whom will be received free of charge and 100 will pay tuition.”

The year 1856 marked Norris’ 10th year in Savannah. He came to the city in 1846 to design the U.S. Custom House, and had enjoyed a steady stream of business since then. He was, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, Savannah’s “most important architect by the 1850s.”

Mary Lane Morrison, in her biography of him, said Norris was a “virtuoso who designed in a blend of many styles.” In addition to the Greek Revival style of Massie School and the

Custom House, Norris also built Gothic Revival and Italianate structures in Savannah. He is credited with completing 18 buildings in Savannah, and an additional nine houses have been attributed to him.

And, though he was born and still made his permanent home in New York, his family – wife, Sarah, and twin daughters Eveline and Josephine – often visited him while he was working in Savannah.

By 1857, he had a second-story office at the corner of Bull Street and Bay Lane, over Camp and Robinson’s store.

He completed several buildings in the next three years, but in 1860, as the possibility of civil war grew stronger, Norris returned to New York. He died in 1876 at the family farm in Blauvelt, N.Y. Massie had its own Civil War experience, in part because of Norris’ design. Because it had a coal-burning furnace in the basement, Gen. William T. Sherman ordered its use as a hospital for Union soldiers, said Steve Smith, curator at the Massie Heritage Center. Unfortunately, because there was no

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coal in the city, soldiers threw just about anything that burned, including students’ desks, into the furnace, and eventually caused it to crack.

Still, even without that heat source, Massie continued to educate local schoolchildren. An east wing, in 1872, and a west wing, in 1886, were added to Norris’ central building, and Massie stayed open as a school until 1974.

It reopened in 1978 as the Massie Heritage Center, an eclectic setting that includes an exhibition on Savannah’s architectural styles. Some 30,000 people, including 8,000 Chatham County students, toured its displays in 2015, said Smith.

U.S. Custom House

Austere and authoritative, this Greek Revival structure made an immediate impact as Norris’ first contract in Savannah. It sits at the intersection of Bull and Bay streets, where Savannah’s founder, Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe, once lived in a small, simple 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 for a new custom house, the building where duties were paid, and ships cleared to enter or leave the port. It hired Norris, who was already working on the Custom House in Wilmington, N.C., as the architect.

The building’s cornerstone was laid on July 18, 1848, and the occasion was marked by a grand ceremony in Johnson Square that included speeches, and the consumption of some 75 gallons of lemonade supplied by Norris. The editors at the Savannah Daily Republican referred to it as “Corner Stone” lemonade.

Construction of the building 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. After the ships docked, it reportedly took 30 days to move the columns up the riverbank to the construction site, and another 30 days to raise them into position.

Jonathan E. Stalcup, author of “Savannah Architectural Tours,” noted that even the building’s “stairs convey a sense of power, with the bottom steps pushing past the fence onto the sidewalk and into the flow of foot traffic.”

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Savannah Georgian, Savannah Daily Republican and Savannah Daily Morning News articles pulled from savnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; New Georgia Encyclopedia; “John S. Norris, Architect in Savannah, 1846-1860,” by Mary Lane Morrison; “The Savannah College of Art and Design: Restoration of an Architectural Heritage,” by Connie Capozzola Pinkerton and Maureen Burke; “Savannah Architectural Tours,” by Jonathan E. Stalcup; www.stjohnssav. org; http://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu; www.scad.edu; www. andrewlowhouse.com; www.gsa.gov.

Above, interior of the Massie School. Below, features of the U.S. Custom House on Bay Street.

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Other notable Norris structures in Savannah Cockspur Island Lighthouse

Abrahams Home for Indigent Females

The first lighthouse built on this site adjacent to Fort Pulaski was put up in 1837-39. That brick structure, however, was damaged by a hurricane, and Norris was put in charge of building a new one in 1848-49. That one was also damaged by a hurricane, and the U.S. Lighthouse Service rebuilt again, using the foundation put up by Norris.

Originally a home for elderly widows, this Greek Revival structure opened its doors in April of 1858, and contained 32 chambers, each with a fire place and a closet. It fulfilled that function for more than 100 years, but was vacant when it was purchased by the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1989. It is now Norris Hall and houses SCAD’s International Student Services Center and Language Office.

Green-Meldrim House Unitarian Meeting House Built in the early 1850s on Oglethorpe Square as a Gothic Revival style-church for the Unitarians, it was moved in the 1860s – possibly by being rolled on logs – to Troup Square. It has since served as a house of worship for African-American Episcopalians, Baptists and Unitarians, who repurchased and restored it.

Stoddard’s Upper and Lower ranges Built 1858-59, these massive brick Italianate-style cotton warehouses were among his last projects in Savannah.

They face River Street on one side and Bay Street on the other.

A Gothic Revival masterpiece built circa-1853 for cotton merchant Charles Green, it features many architectural innovations, including a series of sliding doors, oriel windows, cast-iron porch and a skylight over a curved stairway. Union Gen. William T. Sherman used it as his headquarters during the early federal occupation of Savannah. It is now owned

by St. John’s Church in Savannah, and is open to the public for tours on selected days.

Andrew Low House (Right) Built in 1848-49 on Lafayette Square for cotton merchant Andrew Low, it was later the home of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts. It is now owned by the National Society of the Colonial Dames in the state of Georgia and is open daily as a house museum.

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Mercer-Williams House Norris began construction on this twostory brick Italianate-style house on Monterey Square in 1860. It was intended for Hugh W. Mercer, but Norris left Savannah before it was completed. Hugh Mercer, who served as a general in the Confederate Army and was the greatgrandfather of Johnny Mercer, never lived in the house. It is now the Mercer Williams House Museum.

the harper-fowlkes house

The bald eagle, the insignia of the Society of the Cincinnati, adorns the fountain in the courtyard of the Harper-Fowlkes House.

This page: features of the Harper-Fowlkes house on Orleans Square. Far right, Donna Adamson, Executive director of the Harper-Fowlkes House, stares down the second floor hallway of the Greek Revival mansion.

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the harper-fowlkes house Conceived in the 1840s by “Georgia’s outstanding Greek Revival designer,” restructured in dramatic fashion in the 1890s, and connected to famous Savannah families throughout the 19th century, the Harper-Fowlkes House presents a regal presence on Orleans Square.

Charles B. Cluskey was the original designer of the mansion, historian Mills Lane wrote in “Architecture of the Old South: Georgia.” The house, then two stories high, fronted by four magisterial columns, and framed by sandstone steps, was built in 1842 with Savannah grey bricks for Aaron Champion, a wealthy banker and merchant.

Born in Ireland about 1806, Cluskey studied in New York for a time, and came to Savannah in 1829. With the city still dealing with the economic aftershocks of the 1820 fire and yellow fever epidemic, he didn’t stay long, but moved on to the state’s interior. He worked in Augusta, building a hall for the Medical College, and in Milledgeville, designing the governor’s mansion; before moving back to Savannah in 1839.

He’s credited with planning other distinctive Greek Revival residences, including the one for Francis Sorrel on West Harris Street (now the Sorrel-Weed House), and another for Moses Eastman on Chippewa Square (now the PhilbrickEastman House).

In 1843, Cluskey submitted a Greek Revival design for the new U.S. Custom House, but the government went with a proposal by John Norris instead. In 1847, Cluskey moved to Washington, D.C. His work there later was praised in a letter to President Franklin Pierce: Cluskey was “surveyor and engineer in this city (Washington, D.C.), engineer of the Washington City Canal … His plan for the Extension of the Capitol was considered the best.”

Cluskey moved back to Georgia after the Civil War, designed the lighthouse on St. Simons Island, and died in North Carolina in 1871.

When Aaron Champion died some 10 years later, the Orleans Square house was left to James McAlpin, his son-inlaw, and the son of Savannah industrialist Henry McAlpin.

In 1895, the property passed to the control of Isabel Wilbur McAlpin, and renovations to it soon commenced, and continued through that year and into 1896.

The most obvious change was the new mansard roof, a Second Empire touch that added a third floor and living space for Isabel’s five Irish servants.

The roof was noted in 1936 when the Champion-McAlpin House, as it was then called, was documented as part of the Historic American Buildings Survey. The overall condition of the house was listed as “fair.” The roof was slate, with a metal deck, district officer Harold Bush-Brown wrote.

In 1939, after a lengthy legal dispute concerning the estate, Alida Harper Fowlkes bought the house for $9,000 at an auction held by Citizens and Southern National Bank.

An early preservationist, she formed the Society for the Preservation of Savannah Landmarks, and bought and restored a number of homes in the historic district.

When Fowlkes died in 1985, she stipulated that the property was to be held in trust to the Society of the Cincinnati in the state of Georgia. It is open for tours and can be rented for special events.

Sources: Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “Architecture of the Old South: Georgia,” by Mills Lane; “Savannah Architectural Tours,” by Jonathan E. Stalcup; www.harperfolkeshouse.com; www.waymarking.com; thempc.org; www.loc.gov.

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ironwork The great common denominator of historic downtown Savannah houses and buildings, whether they’re Federal, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate or even Richardsonian Romanesque, are the exquisite ironwork railings, fences and gates that drape entrances, steps and porches as though they were expensive lace.

The ironwork started going up after the fires of 1796 and 1820 destroyed virtually the entire early colonial city. Two early advocates were William Jay and Henry McAlpin.

The enormous iron leaves that support the balcony at the Jaydesigned Owens-Thomas House Museum were manufactured in London. They were ordered circa-1818, when construction on the house began, and arrived before it was completed. In 1820, after the devastating Jan. 11 conflagration, Jay offered to help rebuild the business district with fireproof construction, including iron floor joists and iron roof rafters, but was turned down, and shortly thereafter departed town.

McAlpin opened a foundry at the Hermitage, his Savannah River plantation, in the 1820s. “Work of every description will be executed in a style equal to that of any other factory in the United States, and in the lowest possible terms,” read an 1827 advertisement in the Savannah Georgian. Among the products offered were elegant railings to suit inside or outside stairs, balconies, platforms or tombs.

Soon, other foundries opened in the city. Lachlison Brothers, located in the Indian Street – Fahm Street area; Alvin N. Miller & Co. on the east end of River Street; and brothers David and William Rose, whose Indian Street Foundry in Yamacraw did a booming business in the 1850s, turning out fences and gates.

Northern foundries found plenty of opportunities here as well, as the city expanded in the 1840s and 1850s. Youle and Sabbaton of New York sold cast iron doors and frames, window frames and shutters, items that were particularly popular in Bay Street and River Street commercial buildings, through a Savannah agent. Another New York foundry, John B. Wickersham, fashioned the fence that was put up around Forsyth Park in 1851.

This traffic was, of course, interrupted during the Civil War, but the Savannah foundries stayed busy then as well. The Rose brothers manufactured shot and shell for the Confederacy, and built the ironclad Atlanta.

After the war, other foundries started, including McDonough & Ballentyne, but the two big names in Savannah iron, then, and for many years afterward, were William Kehoe (1842-1929) and John Rourke (1837-1932).

Both natives of Ireland who sailed to Savannah as children, Kehoe and Rourke also each served the Confederacy, Kehoe as an arms maker in Selma, Ala., Rourke as a soldier. After the

war, Kehoe worked at the Savannah Machine and Boiler Works and the Phoenix Architectural Works. In 1880, he set up his own company, Kehoe Iron Works, and it eventually grew to 150 employees and was located on the river front, near the presentday intersection of East River and East Bay streets.

He was most famous then, as he still is now, for his house on Habersham Street at Columbia Square. Equipped with many cast-iron features, it served as a Renaissance Revival advertisement for his foundry. Today, it is a bed and breakfast.

Bourke’s Iron Works was located nearby at Bay and East Broad streets. His house at 530 E. Broughton St. likewise served as testament to his business with its cast-iron window hoods and sills. Rourke remained active in his company until his death at age 94.

Decades later, two blacksmiths settled in Savannah, and brought decorative iron works back to the fore. Ivan Bailey arrived first, setting up his shop, “Bailey’s Forge,” in August of 1973 on East Bay Street. His works, including sunflower gates, weather vanes and 5-foot-andirons, were an immediate success.

Charles Kuralt filmed an episode of “On the Road” at his shop in February of 1974. Bailey twice did repair work on the fountain at Forsyth Park – repairing and reconstructing its tritons in 1973, and repairing its statue in 1977 after it sustained serious damage during an ice storm.

He moved to Atlanta in 1982, but came back to Savannah in 1996 to craft the 17-foot-high Olympic Cauldron in Morrell Park.

Johnny Smith appeared some years later: The first story on him in the Savannah Morning News’ archives is dated Oct. 2, 1988. Talented and talkative, he quickly hammered out such artful works as wrought-iron gates with flowers, butterflies and hummingbirds adoring them, a spiral stair railing featuring egrets standing in marsh grass, and 8-foot-high, 2,000-pound lamps on Washington Avenue.

And, like Bailey, he added to the city’s Olympic legacy. His 5-foot-high Olympic weathervane was placed atop the pavilion at Daffin Park, an iron and sheet metal depiction of sailboats racing to the finish line across a sea of stylized water.

Sources: Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “The National Trust Guide to Savannah,” by Roulhac Toledano; “William Kehoe: Fulfilling the American Dream,” by Carol Ann Causey, part of the Savannah Biographies held at the Special Collections of Lane Library of Armstrong State University; online archives of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah; editions of the Savannah Georgian pulled from savnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu.

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Death-head skull motif iron fence in the 100 East block of Gordon Street.

Gates at the entrance to Gordonston Park, added by Juliette Gordon Low.

Balcony at the Owens-Thomas House.

Iron railing and scrolled panel at the Davenport House, which were shipped in from the North shortly after the War of 1812.

examples of ironwork in savannah

An example of Ironwork at the Kehoe House, which came from the Kehoe foundry.

Blacksmith Ivan Bailey operated Bailey’s Forge in the 1970s and early ‘80s creating new works of wrought iron art for Savannah. At Jones and Lincoln Streets are a stairway and porch with sea oats and marsh birds.

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Another popular Ivan Bailey creation is this intricate courtyard gate on York St. It took Bailey over a month to complete the climbing rose entwined in an orange tree. At the bottom of the gate are several flowers and a mushroom.

the armstrong house Constructed by architect Henrik Wallin in the last days of the Gilded Age, and later categorized by John Berendt as a magnificent “lion of a house,” the Armstrong House has commanded attention and adulation at its high-profile location for almost a century.

Wallin (1873-1936), who crafted several palatial residences in Chatham County, spared no expense during the 1916-1919 campaign to complete the Italian Renaissance-style house at the north end of Forsyth Park for George Ferguson Armstrong, a local shipping magnate.

A 1919 spread on the house in The American Architect contained a wide range of photographs, including one of its distinctive main doorway. A 1919 article in the Savannah Press described that particular feature in great detail. “The entrance door is in antique bronze. In design and execution it is so exquisite that it may well be ranked with the finest jewelry. … A portion of it was on display at the recent annual exhibit of the Architectural League at the Fine Arts building in New York City, and won honorable mention, which was the highest award given to any exhibit.”

The family’s living, dining, entertaining and bed rooms were designed in different periods, such as Early Georgian and Jacobean, and bedecked with complimentary furniture and art.

Sadly, George did not enjoy that opulence for long: He died of

lung cancer in 1924.

Some 11 years later, with Savannah in the grip of the Great Depression, Savannah Mayor Thomas Gamble conducted a lengthy search for a site to start a junior college. The mayor hoped to create an opportunity for local students who could not afford to leave home to attend college. Lucy Camp Armstrong Moltz, George Armstrong’s widow, and Lucy Armstrong Johnson, his daughter, had by then moved away from Savannah, and they agreed to donate their former home to the city.

“In recognition of this splendid contribution to the cause of higher education in Savannah, the institution will be known as the ‘Armstrong Memorial Junior College of Savannah,’” a Savannah Morning News article noted.

Classes started in September of 1935, with 168 students. The Atlanta Constitution, in its coverage of the opening, noted that the house ranked as “the finest and most costly junior college building in the United States.”

Armstrong became a part of the state university system in

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the armstrong house interior

This page: Interior and exterior features of the Armstrong House, located at 447 Bull Street.

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Other notable structures

by Henrik Wallin: Wallin Hall: Originally built in 1912, it was then the 37th Street

Elementary School. Its Prairie Style features include pale buff brick, a low sloping roof and stone framing elements that lend a geometric character to the windows. It was acquired by the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1988.

Torrey-West House on Ossabaw Island: This Spanish Colonial Revival mansion was built on the northern end of the island for Dr. Henry Norton Torrey, who purchased Ossabaw in 1924 as a winter retreat for his family. The house’s centerpiece was a two-story living room with an exposed wood-beam ceiling and paneled and plastered walls.

DeRenne Apartments: Built circa-1920 in the Grecian Revival

style for Wymberley Wormsloe De Renne, it was an economic venture that contained 44 apartments, each of which had French doors that opened onto recessed balconies. Its eight stories still stand over the intersection of Liberty and Drayton streets.

Peruvian student Fred Palle studies on the steps of the Armstrong Building in this Feb. 1, 1961 photo.

1959, and outgrew its downtown location in 1966. The mansion was purchased by Historic Savannah Foundation, and then sold to antiques dealer Jim Williams in 1967.

Williams, in a Dec. 3, 1970, article in the Savannah Evening Press, announced that he was selling the Armstrong House to the law firm of Bouhan, Williams and Levy. The firm, said Williams, will “preserve the integrity” of the building. Now known as Bouhan Falligant LLP, the firm has certainly been a conscientious steward of the property over the intervening 46 years. It required surprisingly little work to turn it into law offices, managing partner Leamon Holliday III said in an article on the firm’s website. “We tried to keep the character and integrity of the structure.”

The offices were named as among “America’s Swankiest” in a 2013 New Republic article and were also named as one of “The Most Beautiful Legal Offices in the World” by blog.legaler.com.

Now that responsibility is being passed to hotelier Richard C. Kessler, who bought Armstrong House earlier this month. In this, as in earlier transactions concerning the house, no price was released.

But, in the 1935 Morning News story concerning the transfer of the property from the Armstrong family to the city, it said it was “erected in 1918 at a cost of $680,000.” Adjusting for inflation, that would cost $10,818,574.83 in 2016.

Gate at Wormsloe Historic Site: Another project for the De Renne family, it was put up in the winter of 1912-1913. The gateway is 62 feet across, with the central arch standing 20 feet high and spanning another 15 feet.

Old Municipal Auditorium: Built on Orleans Square

in 1916, it cost some $200,000 to build. Its Neoclassical architectural style included fluted columns and other decorative touches. It was torn down in 1971 to make way for the current Civic Center.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” by John Berendt; “De Renne: Three Generations of a Georgia Family,” by William Harris Bragg; “The Savannah College of Art and Design: Restoration of an Architectural Heritage,” by Connie Capozzola Pinkerton and Maureen Burke; “Ossabaw Island,” by Ann Foskey; “Lost Savannah: Photographs From the Collections of the Georgia Historical Society,”

by Luciana M. Spracher; “ A Research Paper on George Ferguson Armstrong,” by Diana Guyette, part of the Savannah Biographies held at the Special Collections of Lane Library of Armstrong State University; www.savannahga.gov; www. beyondthegildedage.com; www.sip.armstrong.edu; www.usinflationcalculator.com; bouhan.com; newrepublic.com; and blog.legaler.com.

Other projects on which Wallin was either the chief or a consulting architect included the old Savannah High School (now Savannah Arts Academy), the downtown YMCA, the Cortez Cigar Factory at Abercorn and Bryan streets, the Cohen Drinking Fountain, and the Hitch and Armstrong monuments at Bonaventure Cemetery.

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Mills B. Lane, Jr.

Anne Waring Lane

Mills Lane IV

the lane family restorations Columbia, Warren and Washington Wards

By Gene Carpenter, Beehive Foundation

WHO WERE THE LANES?

Two generations of one family have played prominent roles in the restoration of Savannah’s National Historic Landmark District. Many of their restorations, renovations and new constructions lie within the northeast quadrant of the district – Columbia, Warren and Washington wards. Anne and Mills B. Lane Jr. were active during the 1960s. Except for the restoration of his own house in 1972, Mills Lane IV’s projects were completed during the 1990s. The Lane family restored more than 75 houses and seven public squares within Savannah’s National Historic Landmark District.

Due to the different time periods for the two phases of Lane restorations, the thrust of each was somewhat different. Anne and Mills B. Lane Jr. began their restorations shortly after the saving of the Davenport House in 1955, which marked the beginning of Savannah’s historic preservation movement and the founding of Historic Savannah Foundation. Mills B. Lane Jr. was the son of the founder of Citizens & Southern Bank, now Bank of America, and moved from Savannah to Atlanta to run the family bank. During the 1960s he and his wife Anne Waring Lane, also a native Savannahian, decided to contribute to their hometown’s restoration movement, with Anne Lane at the helm. Their preservation thrust was to create clusters of attractive houses to entice people to return to downtown living.

It included elements of houses they deemed at the time to far gone to restore. Anne and Mills B. Lane Jr. saved several of the houses on the we side of town scheduled for demolition by the city to make way for Savannah’s new civic center. Those houses were moved by flat-bed truck across town and relocated to fill in “missing teeth’ where lots were available within

the northeast quadrant. Houses from other areas were also moved, some architecturally altered, and often porches were added to the rears or sides – changes not all of which would be acceptable by today’s preservation standards. However the seeds of restoration and renovation planted in the northeast quadrant by Anne and Mills B. Lane Jr. played an enormous role in the growth of Savannah’s early preservation movement, and today the Warren/Washington square area remains one of the most attractive and south after neighborhoods within which to live.

Mills Lane IV, their son, always interested in his parents’ projects and restoring his own house in 1972, continued the family passion through the 1990s, sometimes solo and sometimes with his mother who was still living. After founding

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the lane family

The Beehive Press in 1970, Mills Lane IV spent twenty years studying and researching the history of the building arts in the southern states and produced his award-winning 10-volume series, Architecture of the Old South. Knowledge gleaned from that effort imbued his approach to his own restorations. To summarize the difference in approach between the parents and the son, Mills Lane IV is quoted in an article by John Bentley Mays appearing in the Weekend Post of the National Post, Toronto, in 1998.

“My interest in architecture came in the early 1960s when my parents started restoring houses in Savannah, The loved Savannah – it was kind of a ruin at that point, and they wanted it to look better. My parents restored as many as 60 houses and maybe seven squares. If they had a principle of restoration, it was to make the house look better.”

While quietly critical of his parents’ casual “make-it-lookbetter” notion of restoration, and their lack of much interest in “academic, strictly historical” details of Savannah’s 19thcentury architectural heritage, he believes that, “in general, the effect was very good. In the last 10 years, I’ve tried to continue what my parents started, and I’ve supervised the restoration of about 12 to 15 buildings, trying to pursue a more academic standard.”

However, despite his efforts, many of his restorations have had both major and minor alterations. Mays writes in his article: It is no surprise that Lane has personally initiated… attempts to save Savannah from itself…and from tinkerers and well-meaning, but ignorant, fixer-uppers. Though he’s tried to keep intact his changes to facades and edifices after re-sale, by means of legal covenants and informal promises, he wearily confesses that some people who have bought homes he has restored are not keeping the faith. …”I see myself as Don Quixote. And the Windmills are everywhere” Between the salutary restorations of Anne and Mills B. Lane Jr., and the academically interpreted ones of their son, Mills Lane IV, the two generations played significant thought very different roles in the evolution of Savannah’s restoration movement. – the elder Lanes in their desire to create neighborhoods of attractive historic homes to encourage people to move downtown again, and their son’s desire to return important houses to their new-original splendor and build new houses based on the Classical ideals of Savannah’s past.

BEFORE AND AFTER: 136-140 Habersham Street

BEFORE AND AFTER: 401 East Broughton Street

restoration work

BEFORE AND AFTER: 419 East Broughton Street - 40 -

BEFORE AND AFTER: 424 East President Street

the lane family’s primary architects Anne and Mills B. Lane Jr., and Mills Lane IV, used several different architects for their projects, but two major architects stand out and were the primary architects used for the majority of the restorations.

John C. LeBey (1905-2002)

Anne and Mills B. Lane Jr.’s primary architect was John C. LeBey, a wellrespected Savannah architect and preservationist. Preceding the Lane restorations, LeBey was the architect for the restoration of the Davenport House, the keystone to Savannah’s preservation movement. LeBey worked not only in Savannah but throughout Georgia, and in South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee and Texas. Shown here are several of the beautiful renderings of Lane houses executed by LeBey, now in the archives of The Beehive Foundation.

Harvie P. Jones (1930-1998)

Mills Lane IV chose Harvie Jones of Huntsville, Ala., to serve as his primary restoration architect, stating “He’s the only architect I know who appears not to have a big ego. He really sees himself as a servant of history and architecture.” Robert Martin, in his article about Harvie Jones appearing in Southern Living magazine after Jones’ death, writes:

If ever there was a protector and guardian of the historic homes and buildings that grace our Southern landscape, it was architect Harvie Jones. From coastal Georgia to the mountains of Tennessee to rural Alabama, many one-dilapidated and doomed structures now stand restored for generations to admire as a result of Mr. Jones’s masterful hand.

Harvie Jones writes to Mills Lane IV in a letter dated Sept. 13, 1993:

You and Mrs. Lane are performing a service in historic preservation that is surely unprecedented in any city. The latest project (William Parker Houses) is, I believe, the ninth house restoration or partial restoration you have recently undertaken, not county the five infill houses either planned or completed. In addition, there are many houses done in the past by the Lane family, including your own and Mrs. Lane’s houses. You are a case of a single family being the difference in saving or not saving a major portion of Savannah’s historic architecture. You have done this out of a sense of good citizenship, which is the best reason for such deeds.

Top to Bottom: 424 E. President, 421-425 E. St. Julian, 419 E. St. Julian and a conjectural house for 426 E. St. Julian, never built.

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detail oriented The buildings of Savannah are full of incredible architectural gems.

You just have to take a walk and pay close attention to find them all!

We’ll start you off with a few of our favorites

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Architectural Details

around monterey square

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Architectural Details

around gordon street

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Architectural Details

around jones street

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Architectural Details

around orleans square

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Architectural Details

around wayne street

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Architectural Details

around lafayette square

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Architectural Details

around whitaker street

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Ardsley Park and Chatham Crescent became Savannah’s first two automobile suburbs.

Above, the 2800 block of Abercorn Street. At right, the 2600 block of Atlantic Avenue. Top of opposite page, the 900 block of East Victory Drive.

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ardsley park & chatham crescent As the automobile age cranked up in the early 20th century in Savannah, the planners of Ardsley Park turned to a familiar colonial design to configure its streets and squares, the grid layout of Gen. James E. Oglethorpe, while adjoining Chatham Crescent, under development at the same time, steered toward a newer classical style that had originated in France.

The two suburbs are approximately bounded by Waters Avenue on the east, Bull Street on the west, 51st and 54th streets on the south, and Victory Drive and Maupas Avenue on the north. Their development began in 1909-10, an exciting time for the city. The Port of Savannah was then the world’s largest shipper of naval stores, and the third-largest cotton exporter. Savannah also hosted the Great Savannah Races of 1908, 1910 and 1911, an early automobile competition that garnered nationwide attention.

Ardsley Park and Chatham Crescent thus became Savannah’s first two automobile suburbs, although the streetcar had not yet been forgotten. Abercorn Street was to run through the center, through which the main streetcar belt – Abercorn and Barnard – would eventually be extended, thus providing “a distinct guarantee of future value,” according to a 1914 advertisement in the Savannah Morning News.

Harry Hays Lattimore and William Lattimore, working through the Ardsley Park Land Corp., were chiefly responsible for the Ardsley Park side. Harvey Granger, working through the Chatham Land and Improvement Co., was the leader of the development of the Chatham Crescent portion. Those two companies bought up “swamp land beyond the edge of the city,” in the words of 1985 National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for Ardsley Park – Chatham Crescent, and began to transform it.

The first home constructed in Ardsley Park was at the corner of Washington Avenue and Abercorn Street. It was completed in 1910. From there, Ardsley Park took shape as a variant of Oglethorpe’s 1733 plan for Savannah. Its gridiron neighborhoods were broken into wards and featured several landscaped squares. But, to better control the flow of automobile traffic, the squares were offset from the main streets.

Chatham Crescent was based on a much different scheme, a flamboyant French-inspired Beaux Arts plan that included a grand mall, crescent-shaped avenues, small circular parks and a Spanish Revival grand hotel that would, developers hoped, appeal to Northern tourists. It’s Georgia’s only known example of a Beaux Arts-influenced City Beautiful plan.

Atlantic Avenue, the grand mall that runs from Maupas to 47th Street, is today lined with palm trees and large houses. Its piece de resistance, the Hotel Georgia, however, did not pan out. Ground for it was broken in 1912, and it was to have been built in the style of the old DeSoto Beach Hotel at Tybee Island.

But, construction was delayed, and then what was completed was destroyed in the 1920s.

In its place, the board of education put up a probably unintended architectural treasure in 1937, Savannah High School, now the Savannah Arts Academy. “The school, built in a simplified Beaux Arts style, is a landmark structure,” the National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form states.

“It is significant as one of the major Federal building projects in Savannah during the Depression, and for its association with six of Savannah’s important early 20th-century architects.”

The works of those and other architects – an all-star cast that includes Henrik Wallin, Hyman Witcover, Henry Urban,

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Olaf Otto, E. Lynn Drummond, Percy Sudgen, Morton Levy, George B. Clarke and Cletus Bergen – can be found throughout Ardsley Park and Chatham Crescent.

The architectural styles in Ardsley Park and Chatham Crescent include Neoclassical, Georgian and Colonial Revival, Dutch Colonial, Tudor Revival, English Cottage, Bungalow, Craftsman, Mediterranean, Spanish Colonial Revival and even Prairie.

The landscaping is also worthy of note. More than 5,000 trees were planted in Chatham Crescent during its development, among them live oaks, palms, dogwoods, elms, sugarberries, white oaks, magnolias and gums.

Public spaces in both developments were landscaped by the Berckmans brothers of the Fruitland Nursery in Augusta, which was established in 1858, and was the most influential nursery in the South.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; 1985 National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for Ardsley Park – Chatham Crescent; “Savannah’s Historic Neighborhoods: Ardsley Park, Chatham Crescent, Ardmore,” by Polly Powers Stramm; “Primary Sources,” a publication of the Massie Heritage Center, Savannah’s Museum for History and Architecture.

Above, the 100 East block of 45th Street. Below, the 2900 block of Atlantic Avenue.

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the ellis square fountain

back to the future The foundation of Gen. James E. Oglethorpe’s city plan was uniformity, but Savannah has shown over the years that it also prizes creativity, even when it’s mixed with a little controversy.

Ellis Square abounds with people these days as residents and tourists alike are charmed by its multi-use, open-space concept that gives children an opportunity to play, parents an underground place to park, and music lovers an occasion to pose next to a life-size statue of Savannah songwriter Johnny Mercer.

It was much like that in 1733 in another plan, Gen. James Oglethorpe’s original concept for the city. Early Decker Ward residents gathered in the square to socialize, and to participate in military drills. Its character changed, however, in 1763, when the city market shifted there from Wright Square. Over the next 191 years, four separate market structures stood in the square.

The last one, an enormous Savannah-grey brick structure which welcomed customers for more than 80 years, was razed in 1954 to make room for a parking garage.

Preservations seethed in the wake of that decision, and formed Historic Savannah Foundation the next year. In 2005, a short time after the parking lot’s lease expired, it too fell to the wrecking ball. Contracting with the architectural firm of Lominack Kolman Smith, the city turned back the clock.

The project took several years to complete, and included

14 public meetings to discuss design principles, but the result became an immediate downtown attraction upon its opening in 2010. Its features include the four-level, 1,065-space parking garage, a visitors center, performance spaces, a fountain, and an adjacent plaza that’s a perfect place to sit and enjoy the ambience.

Again filled with people and conversations, it has brought back the spirit of the Colonial-era Ellis Square.

The venerable Telfair Academy seemed an unlikely agent for the loudest architectural argument in the city’s history.

Constructed as a Regency-style mansion in 1818-1819 by acclaimed architect William Jay, and converted to an art museum in 1886 by American Institute of Architects cofounder Detlef Lienau, the institution thereafter reflected the rectitude of its benefactress, Mary Telfair.

That is, until 1998. In July of that year, the Telfair announced that it planned an expansion, a new building to house its collection of 20th and 21st-century art. A short time later, a committee unanimously chose Moshe Safdie and Associates Inc. to fashion the new Telfair building. After that, unanimity was in short supply.

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Safdie’s credentials were superb. His firm’s design resume included the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard Business School’s Morgan Hall, the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, and the Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem.

None of that seemed to matter, though, after Safdie presented his first proposal in 1999. It drew the wrath of many residents, including prominent preservationists Mills B. Lane and Lee Adler. “The Telfair will be the loser if it builds a new museum that is detested because it violates the town plan,” Lane said.

A two-year-long, back-and-forth, exchange of ideas, proposals and opinions ensued, involving, but certainly not limited to, Safdie, the Historic Review Board and the City Council. It was all great fodder for the Letters to the Editor section of the Morning News, but it also gradually changed and arguably improved the building. The key compromise was the decision to add six stone columns to the glass façade that looks out onto Telfair Square.

The groundbreaking ceremony was held on Oct. 15, 2001, and the $24.5 million facility was named for local philanthropists Alice and Robert S. Jepson Jr. It finally opened on March 10, 2006. Now, 10 years later, the Jepson is a comfortable member of the Telfair Museums, attracting visitors with a wide range of distinctive, modern exhibits.

Perhaps Safdie, who encountered similar opposition to building that were eventually constructed and acclaimed in Vancouver and Ottawa, summed it up best in a 1999 Morning News article: “The criticism evaporates,” he said. “People just flock in and love it.”

An amalgamation of the antebellum past of Savannah, and the audacious vision of lead architect Christian Sottile, the SCAD Museum of Art has created a gleaming cultural center from the once crumbling remains of a railroad complex.

Built in 1853 with walls of Savannah grey bricks and floors of heart pine timbers, the warehouse for the Central of Georgia Railroad stretched more than 800 feet. It was a key structure in what is now the only standing pre-Civil War railroad station in the nation.

But, as rail traffic diminished, and eventually disappeared from downtown, the warehouse and adjoining depot fell into disrepair. In 2003, though it was recognized as National Historic Landmark, the warehouse was in such a precarious state that the city’s Historic Review Board dictated that the warehouse walls had to be stabilized with steel beams.

Sottile’s vision for the museum, which opened in 2011, did much more than just shore up those bricks: It made them an art form that supports and contrasts with an 86-foot-high, steel-and-glass lantern that shines like a beacon as it beckons art lovers to the entrance.

With 82,000 square feet of space, the cutting-edge museum contains a wealth of display space, along with 10 classrooms, two study suites and a 250-seat theater. Its permanent collections include the Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies, which includes works from renowned artists Jacob Lawrence, Clementine Hunter, Romare Bearden and others; the Andre Leon Talley Gallery, which displays garments from modern fashion designers; and the Earle W. Newton Collection of British and American art.

“We have centuries of layering throughout the site,” Sottile said in a 2011 Morning News article. “It’s a building that could only have happened in Savannah and at SCAD.”

old savannah city market prior to demolition

Above, the old City Market parking garage, the current site of Ellis Square.

Below, demolition of the parking garage.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; www.lksarchitects.com; www.telfair.org, usatoday30.usatoday.com; www.scadmoa.org.

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the jepson center for the arts

the scad museum of art

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the davenport house

ESSAY

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

THE IMPORTANCE OF HSF AND WHERE IS SAVANNAH GOING?

By Daniel Carey, Historic Savannah Foundation

daniel carey

While humbled at the Savannah Morning News’ invitation to write something about Historic Savannah Foundation’s role in Savannah’s past, present and future, I struggled with something new to say. Is it necessary to remind people of HSF’s leadership in saving Savannah? Does the case for preservation’s value still need to be made in 2016? HSF has been at this since 1955 and the organization’s record is remarkable. Alas, like many noble causes, the work is never done.

It’s easy to talk about HSF’s track record: saving the Isaiah Davenport House, establishing a Revolving Fund that has saved more than 360 buildings, sponsoring excellent educational programs for youths and adults, and being the courageous voice for preservation even when it is unpopular and costly to do so. I can wax about the Seven Ladies, HSF’s outstanding professional staff, and the hundreds of generous donors and volunteers who give us the fuel to do our work. But we’ve been doing that over the last few years — from hosting the National Preservation Conference in 2014, to celebrating HSF’s 60th anniversary in 2015, and recognizing the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Landmark District in 2016. Can you tire of taking victory laps? Of course not, but rather than look back at a litany of accomplishments, I focused on the second half of the assignment — the outlook for Savannah’s future.

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can affirm that feeling. To be sure, there is a vibrancy and a hum. And the heat given off by the current real estate market may explain the scorching summer we’re having. There may be more cranes in downtown Savannah than in downtown Beijing. Broughton Street is jumping and neighborhoods in mid-city (i.e., Thomas Square) are slowly but surely being revitalized. Yes, it’s easy to argue that Savannah’s glass appears to be half-full.

So why, then, does the other part of the glass leave me with a nagging feeling of being half-empty?

Is it the insidious problem of blight and the city’s anemic response to it?

Is it the gushing faucet of tourists who can be seen and heard (and picked up after) throughout downtown? Is it the scale and type of buildings going up — mostly large hotels? Or is it the crime? It’s easy to default to crime, but let’s resist the temptation. Let’s focus instead on three issues where a tip here or a nudge there can be devastating … or it can be revolutionary. Let’s make sure it’s the latter.

Blight, tourism and development pressures each present opportunities for Savannah. Blighted buildings can be rehabilitated for affordable housing. Hordes of tourists can be converted into sensitive allies. And development — if it’s designed and executed well — can mean new buildings that are actually worth preserving in another 50 years. How do we get there? I don’t know exactly, but I can tell you with all certainty how we won’t get there … and that’s through complacency with the status quo.

“Only time will tell.” This oft-relied upon phrase is a dangerous form of procrastination. In post-World War II, our community faced an uncertain future. Was Savannah looking to become more like Jacksonville, “a modern progressive city,” or were we looking in the mirror to find our own face?

Fortunately, instead of wringing our hands and saying only time will tell, Seven Ladies pulled together to save one historic building (Isaiah Davenport House, circa 1820) and, by doing so, stated unequivocally that “Savannah will be Savannah.” And from the establishment of the Historic Savannah Foundation in 1955, the course of this city changed. We went from being a dirty, blighted urban core with disinvestment, demolition and no sense of self, to becoming one of the largest urban National Historic Landmark Districts in the country and a world-class destination. HSF makes no singular claim to that metamorphosis, but there can be no doubt that preservation — led largely by private efforts — was the catalyst.

Through brains, pluck, perseverance and sheer will, HSF’s early leaders understood that real estate was the name of the game and the best way to control the fate of an historic building was to own it — at least for a little while. So, HSF improved upon a revolving fund model set up by Historic Charleston Foundation. Half a century later, HSF’s program is one of the most revered and modeled in the country. Along with it, the Davenport House Museum is first in its class, and HSF’s advocacy and educational programs ensure that the voice for preservation is loud and clear.

So what about the next 50 years? How will we address blight, tourism and development pressures? Will we use preservation and the revitalization of neighborhoods as our compass? Will we relax at the trough of tourism and risk losing our identity? Could Savannah turn into Anyplace, USA? When things were out of balance in the 1950s and ’60s, and we were sliding toward Atlanta and Jacksonville, the key to getting centered was homesteading through the strategic rehabilitation of blighted historic buildings. Why is it that when we look at Thomas Square, Eastside or Cuyler-Brownville today, we don’t see what the Landmark and Victorian districts were yesterday? Those two historic districts were once chock full of vacant blighted buildings (and crime), but now they are the standard bearers of lively, diverse and mixed-use neighborhoods. Why don’t we recognize that today’s blighted areas can follow the same path to salvation?

The conventional response to blight today is, too often, demolition and a

May 15, 1963 - Founders of Historic Savannah Inc. seated first row left to right: Lucy Barrow McIntire, Elinor Grunsfeld Adler Dillard, Anna Colquitt Hunter.

Standing, second row left to right: Nola McEvoy Roos, Jane Adair Wright, Katherine Judkins Clark. Not pictured: Dorothy Ripley Roebling.

resulting weed lot. The paired use of carrots and sticks as incentive and regulation is underutilized. Property owners should be incentivized to fix up their vacant buildings with technical assistance, help with home-buyer down payments, grants for energy retro-fits, access to low-interest home financing, and use land-banking and moving property into the hands of those who can and will make improvements. Meanwhile, recalcitrant “demolition-by-neglect lords” should be hauled into court and made to affect immediate repairs and/or pay large fines, or, better still, forced to get out of the way and let someone else do what they are only talking about. The future of Eastside and Cuyler-Brownville, for example, rests in part with the city’s ability to implement creative programs and facilitate homesteading in those neighborhoods — to ensure decent affordable housing for people who wish to remain in their homes and attract new residents as well.

Tourism is good — when managed and kept in proper balance with residents’ needs. HSF practically invented heritage tourism in Savannah in the mid-1960s, when we drafted “Sojourn in Savannah” and joined the Chamber of Commerce in promoting Savannah as a day destination based on our rich history and architecture. So, while there was a time when only a scant few people stopped in Savannah, today we host 14 million visitors - 57 -

and are witnessing a spate of hotel construction. If there is any truth to perception being reality, then visitors appear to hold the trump card over residents, which is reflected in decisions that favor their wallets over those who live and toil here 24/7/365. Right or wrong, the perception among many residents — especially those who live downtown — is there is too much tourism. We need strategic management of tourism to allow it to sustain itself without choking off the authenticity provided by residents.

In the last 10 years, Savannah has witnessed a proliferation of hotels and tour services, and there appears to be no end in sight. As much credit as HSF deserves for starting this chain reaction, we also bear some responsibility for keeping it under control. Enter the need for a comprehensive Tourism Management Plan and the political will to enforce it. The city of Savannah should — like the Seven Ladies — take the long view. Instead of opting for the path of least resistance and a quick buck, both the tourism industry and the resident-iality of the Landmark District can be sustained by keeping these competing interests in balance. And, if the city errs, it should err on the side of residents. Year-round residents make the Landmark District great, and that’s why people come to Savannah. If we lose the residents, we’ll lose the tourists.

Savannah is enjoying record-breaking growth. The economic doldrums of 2009 seem a distant memory and real estate is, once again, king. And that means there are enormous development pressures —especially on downtown. Hotels, vacation rentals and large-scale apartment complexes more than dot General Oglethorpe’s landscape. Back in the day, the issue was demolition and vacant lots. Today’s issue is just the opposite — bigger, taller and denser buildings compromising the human scale of the Landmark District. Designing successful infill buildings is a challenge because the architect serves two masters: historic context and contemporary design.

Almost by definition, the results are diluted. On one hand, you have to follow the ordinance to get a permit. On the other, this city deserves bold new designs reflective of the 21st century. How do we reconcile those two

seeming opposites? Reasonable restrictions and design guidelines are warranted, but we should also know when to remove the handcuffs and free up creativity.

The local preservation ordinance and HSF are not enough to overcome the generous granting of variances that whittle away at the integrity of the Landmark Historic District. As Savannah trades for one thing, it compromises another — the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg.

More and more people are encouraged to return to the urban core to live, work and play, but they should come with the understanding that their McMansion-scaled lifestyle may be in conflict with Oglethorpe’s plan and three centuries of carefully managed growth. Instead of imposing their suburban view on downtown, they should adjust to an urban scale and respect the streetscape. There is room for respectful growth and the Landmark Historic District is not frozen in amber. But growth should subordinate itself to the prevailing patterns and scale; not dwarf it.

Looking ahead, where does HSF fit into all of this? The more things change the more they stay the same. In spite of great progress that has been made over the last 60 years, there are still battles of unnecessary demolition and insensitivity to Savannah’s trademark history and architecture. The players have changed, but the game of less vs. more remains the same. HSF is not just about protecting historic buildings; HSF is about protecting Savannah’s unique identity and brand. We are as much a planning organization as we are a preservation organization. People visit and move here to experience beauty, authenticity and a feel that is predicated on an historic and human scale that retains its soul.

Equilibrium is not a pipe dream. If we address today’s challenges the way we tackled demolition and disinvestment of yesterday, then we can be bullish on our future. But if we rest on our laurels and opt for the passage of time to tell our future, then the future may be dim. HSF remains true to its mission of being an advocacy organization focused on protecting Savannah’s past, present and future.

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top 10

buildings and sites compiled by historic savannah foundation The circa-1820 Isaiah Davenport House, (right) where historic preservation began in Savannah.

This list was compiled after considerable discussion among the staff of the Historic Savannah Foundation.

The Others (in no particular rank);

Scottish Rite Masonic Center, 341 Bull Street.

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The Old Chatham County Jail (Now SCAD’s Habersham Hall) at Habersham Street and Perry Lane.

Marshall Row, the 200 block of East Oglethorpe Avenue.

top 10

buildings and sites - 60 -

The Globe storage tank at East 73rd Street, just south of DeRenne.

Pin Point Heritage Museum, 9924 Pin Point Avenue.

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The mid20th Century ranch house at the NW corner of 65th and Abercorn Streets.

The Carnegie Branch Library at 537 East Henry Street.

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The Grey restaurant, 109 Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard.

Remnant of the Augustus Wetter House at the corner of MLK and Oglethorpe Avenue.

top 10

buildings and sites - 63 -

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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.

Steve Bisson, chief photographer, 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.

John Duncan, a 12th generation Charlestonian, migrated south in 1965 to teach history at Armstrong State University. He specialized in the history of Savannah, sharing his love of the city with thousands of students over the next 30 years. Since 1985, he has shared the stories and documents of the city’s past with thousands of visitors to the shop he and his wife, Ginger, run on Monterey Square – V & J Duncan Antique Maps, Prints & Books. Of his many interests, his one confessed passion is to gather all that can be known about architect William Jay, whom he and Ginger have pursued from Georgia, through South Carolina, across England and into the Indian Ocean.

Sandra Underwood and her husband, John,

Julia Muller, a native Savannahian, is archivist and online producer at the Savannah Morning News.

Christopher Sweat grew up just west of here in Patterson, but now calls Savannah home. A graduate of the University of Georgia and Armstrong State University, he is the commercial content manager of the Savannah Morning News. He was responsible for the design and layout of Stories Set in Stone. While, by no means is he an architect, his skills at building LEGO houses with his niece and nephew are beyond compare.

moved to Savannah in 2002, looking for sunshine and lovely old houses. Both were retired from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where she was a professor of art history, and he was executive vice president. Searching for bits of Savannah history for a book project – The Bird Girl: The Story of a Sculpture by Sylvia Shaw Judson (Schiffer, 2006) – Sandy met John Duncan and volunteered to help tell the story of William Jay. A book manuscript is now underway.

Gene Carpenter is Special Projects Coordinator for the Beehive Foundation. The stories were originally produced for an exhibit at a conference hosted by Historic Savannah Foundation for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Daniel G. Carey, President & CEO of the Historic Savannah Foundation, born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, he received a Master’s degree in Folk Studies/ Historic Preservation from Western Kentucky University.

He began working for the Office of Historic Properties in Frankfort, Kentucky, and in 1991 moved to Charleston to work for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. After nearly ten years serving in the Southern office he moved to Fort Worth to run the Southwest office of the NTHP. He began his tenure at HSF in December of 2008.

Publisher Michael C. Traynor Executive Editor Susan Catron

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set in

Savannah and Her Unique Architecture

is part of the

Savannah Stories Collection of Publications Previous editions include: Savannah A to Z, Guide to the good life, stories from our souls and Savannah Stories

special publication Copyright 2016, Savannah Morning News

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Photograph by Attic Fire Photography

Celebrating Savannah Architecture SHIPS OF THE SEA MARITIME MUSEUM

Fine books about the South

WILLIAM SCARBROUGH HOUSE AND GARDENS

shipsofthesea.org

beehivefoundation.org - 68 -