Savannah

Day 185

There is something to be said about hiring tour guides when traveling in places rich with history. I know a few friends just cringed reading that, believing tour guides are for old people… I guess I’m old, but my point is; you learn so much history in such little time, it’s mind blowing. If I had walked through Savannah I would have thought it seemed like a nice old town with plenty of parks. What I learned was the city of Savannah was one of the first colonies to use the Oglethorpe plan when laying out the city. The entire city was designed in a grid. Four parks had been marked out in equally distance and homes were built around the parks allowing for easy access. As the town grew twenty more parks with homes were added to the grid. The homes surrounding the parks are rich with history and I was only able to scratch the surface of a few of them below. 

Today we headed to the Old Town Trolley Tours, which had busses stop every fifteen minutes at each of the sixteen stops spread out around town. Once you boarded, the driver would provide commentary to the areas of the town as you drove past. Our first driver did her best, but the commentary was very basic, she even pointed out a subway restaurant to us. Halfway through the tour, our bus was finished its tour and we needed to switch over to a new one to complete our second half. The second driver made up up for the first one! He really opened our eyes to the history around us. Below I have done my best to provide the details of what we learned. 

Our first day involved an on and off bus to get around the town.  

Built in 1818 for Alexander Telfair, son of Edward Telfair, one of Georgia’s early post-independence governors. In 1875 Alexander’s sister, Mary, bequeathed the house, including its furnishings and family collections to he Georgia Historical Society, which opened the first art museum in the southeastern United States in 1886. It has remained a museum and is now the oldest museum to be housed in one of the oldest buildings in the US. 

The Perceval square was the second square established in Savannah. Named after John Perceval, 1st Earl of Egmont, who gave the colony of Georgia its name (a tribute to Great Britain’s King George II). The square was renamed in 1763 to honour James Wright, the third and final royal governor of Georgia. 

The square is also the burial site of Tomochichi, a leader of the Creek nation of Native Americans. Tomochichi was a trusted friend of James Oglethorpe (first settler) and assisted him in the founding of his colony. 

The Sorrel-Weed House was the boyhood home of Brigadier General Moxley Sorrel, who fought for the Confederate States during the Civil War. After the war he wrote “Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer” and is considered to be one of the top postwar accounts written. General Robert E. Lee was friends with Sorrel and had occasionally visited the home in 1861 and 1862. 

The opening scene of the 1994 film Forest Gump was filmed from the rooftop of the Sorrel-Weed House. The scene, which begins with a floating feather through the Savannah sky, pans the rooftops of other buildings occupying Madison Square as seen from the very top of the Sorrel-Weed home. 

Drain spouts fashioned into a mythical creatures made out of iron. In the old days, iron was a symbol of wealth, the more you had on your house the wealthier you were believed to be. This house had custom made downspouts 

First African Baptist Church was built in the 1850s by both free African American and slaves. The builders made the bricks and built the church by candlelight, after the slaves had laboured in the fields all day. The church was the first building constructed of brick to be owned by African Americans in the state of Georgia. In secrecy, the church was part of the Underground Railroad and housed runaway slaves in a four foot space beneath the sanctuary’s floorboards. To hide air holes on the floor, the church constructed the floor to look like tribal symbols. 

Built in 1903, this 10,535 sqft mansion facing Johnsons squares can be yours for only $9,954,779. 

Now a law school, this building was originally one of the oldest operating hospitals in the country. First chartered in 1804 the hospital was revolutionary for its day. Unfortunately, many of the revolutionary treatments back then were horrifying procedures. The hospital also had a tunnel running underneath it to a local park where it would be used to remove the deceased. During the yellow fever  pandemic of 1878 the tunnel was filled with dead bodies. Today it it said to be one of the most haunted buildings in Savannah.

 

Savannah has been used in several movies. The Six Pence Pub was used in the 2014 movie Something to Talk About, staring Julia Roberts. 

Grace, (Julia Roberts character) is looking into the pub to catch her husband with another woman. 

Construction of the Mercer House began in 1860 and not finished until 1868 due to the American Civil War. Nobody of the Mercer name ever lived in the house. In 1969, 11-year-old Tommy Downs few from the roof of the house and was killed after being impaled on the iron fence on the West Gordon Street side of the house. It is believed he was hunting pigeons. The tip of one of the two spiked prongs he landed on is still broken. For a period in the twentieth century, the building was used by the Savannah Shriners. It then lay vacant for a decade until 1969, when it was restored and passed ownership a few times before being turned into a museum and one of the haunted house sites of Savannah

The Hamilton-Turner house was built in 1873 by Samuel Pugh Hamilton and was the first house in Savannah to have electricity. In 1883 lights were installed in the salon and the rest of the house was fitted with lights by 1886. The house was made famous by the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Over the years paranormal activity has been reported by guest of the home, including: the sound of children laughing, billiard balls rolling around on the upper floor and sightings of a strange, cigar-smoking man sitting on the roof. 

The Chippewa Square is where the park bench scene was filmed in Forest Gump. The statue is still there (below) but the park bench was a prop. I did locate the cement wall behind the bench, unfortunately there was a Halloween doggy parade happening today and tents were obscuring any photos.  

This photo shows how it was for the movie, and how it is now. 

The Armstrong House was built between 1917 and 1919 by George Ferguson Armstrong. The builder of the house made the bricks from marble powder. Over the years the the house had gone through several structural modifications. Today the house is being restored back to its original look when first built. 

The Roman Catholic cathedral of John the Baptist, built in 1859. Originally the colonial charter of Savannah prohibited Roman Catholics from settling in the city. The English trustees feared that the Catholics would be more loyal to the Spanish authorities in Florida than the English government in Georgia, however this prohibition faded shortly after the American Revolution. 

The Telfair hospital for females built in 1884. The only way for men to get inside the building was to be born there, after that you had 48 hours to pack your soother and get out 😂

The Candler Oak Tree is estimated to have been growing since the early 1700s, making it one of the oldest living landmarks in the area. The tree is 54 feet (16.5 meters) tall and has a circumference of 17 feet (5.2 meters) tall. It’s average crown spread is 110 feet (34 meters)

Market Street 

Savannah had a reputation… and still does, for being a drinking town. Like many places in America, prohibition hit the city hard. The idea that people could no longer go into an establishment and get a drink was shocking to a lot of people. Many Savannah establishments found a way to work around it, like the Crystal Beer Parlor, which had two hatch doors on the floors. Being the perfect geography Savannnah became a major hub for bootlegging across the country. Vessels would lay just outside the three-mile international waters line; aptly named “Rum Row”. Locals would run the rum inland, losing the federal agents and coast guard on the rivers through the barrier islands. Once the rum was inland, it would be loaded into runner cars like the one in the photo to other states. 

Of course we need to try the Southern food. We had heard we needed to try Paula Deans. It was very good!