It was designed by English-trained archtect William Jay, who came to the United States in 1817 -- about a year after construction started -- to oversee the work. He stuck around long enough to design the Telfair Academy, some other Greek revival-style buildings as well as neoclassical homes for the city's most affluent residents. He also did work in Charleston and Columbia, S.C.
The home's first occupants, slave trader Richard Richardson and his wife and six children, made it their home in January 1819, but they weren't there very long. The financial panic that began that year, combined with the yellow fever epidemic and the death of Frances, Richardson's wife, and two of their children, prompted Richardson to sell the home in 1822 and move to Louisiana.
A bank took possession and leased the property until 1830, when Savannah Mayor George Welshman Owens bought it at auction. Owens, also a lawyer and planter, kept up to 15 slaves on the property in seperate quarters (he also held 400 others in bondage on his various plantations). The last Owens descendant to live in the property was Margaret Gray Thomas, who died in 1951 and bequeathed the property as a museum to the Telfair Academy.
Today, visitors can pay for a ticket ($20 for adults, $18 for seniors) that is good for a week and can be used for one-time admissions to this home as well as the Telfair Academy museum and Jepson Center for the Arts, which are within 10 minutes of each other in the city's historic district (Telfair and Jepson themselves are a half-block from each other). And unlike a lot of other homes and museums in the city and other communities, tourists are welcome to take photographs inside.
One of the most fascinating points of interest in the Owens-Thomas house is the rare upstairs bridge (shown in the photo leading off the post), which connects the front and back sections of the house. It is not believed to have been part of the original design but was added sometime later.
Today, the open plaza separating the housemaster living area and the slave quarters and carriage house is a beautifully landscaped garden. But in the beginning, it was an unlandscaped open area that slaves used to hang laundry and perform other jobs not permissible indoors.
As always, to view a larger, sharper version of a photo, simply click on it. This is particularly helpful if you access the blog using a mobile device. To see all my shots from the Owen-Thomas House and Slave Quarters, follow the link in this sentence.
Photo geek stuff: All shots were taken with my Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens and bracketed for three exposures to meld into one in post-processing using Photomatix high-dynamic range (HDR) software.
Above: Our tour guide for the day.
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