Return to Savannah, Part I: Revisiting the historic district

Of the many travels Lee Ann and I have enjoyed in our golden years, my favorite stop has always been Savannah, Ga., which is why we returned there this month for the sixth time in as many years. 

We always make a point to do or see something new when we get to Savannah, but we also revisit some favorite places and or eateries. But I'll quickly add, that some of the eateries we found absolutely delightful in our earlier visits have been less than delightful in subsequent visits. I can't help but wonder if the luster begins to fade the moment you walk out of a place you really enjoyed on a first visit. 

One example that pops to mind is The Lady & Sons southern cooking restaurant owned by TV personality Paula Dean and her two sons. We thoroughly enjoyed our first visit there in Savannah in March 2017; and we made a point to visit it and an affiliate eatery in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in the years thereafter. 

But none of the return visits equaled that of the first, to the point that this visit marked the first time we did not stop there to eat when we were in Savannah. We did, however, return there for drinks one night, and I'm pleased to report that the mixed drink "Savannah Lemonade," which was an utter delight at that first meal at Paula's in 2017, remains a delicious gem. 

Savannah Lemonade is a mixture of Fruitland Augusta Peach Tea Vodka, lemonade and a splash of lemon-lime soda. And it sure hit the spot on a dry-mouth night after a long day on foot. We each took one for the road to enjoy in our room when we left (it's legal to carry alcoholic beverages in the downtown area as long as it's one per person (12 oz. maximum size) and they are in a transparent plastic cup). Of course, there's nothing to prevent you from stopping at another establishment to get another after you finish one.

But I'm spending way too much time talking about alcohol. A couple other things we did a second time is enjoy the full hour and a half downtown trolley ride and historic tour. We hadn't done this since the first visit, so given that six years had passed, it really was a welcome revisit. I heard a lot of things from the driver/guide that, if I'd heard them on the 2017 ride, I'd since forgotten. 

There was never a dull moment on the tour, either; the guide had something interesting to share on almost every turn she made during the ride, and she made lots of turns, partly in order to give us a chance to see at least half (if not more) of the twentysomething city squares that distinguish this city from all others. 

We got to rehear some Forrest Gump, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The Conspirator motion picture stories because all or portions of each of those films was recorded in Savannah. And I never tire of hearing about how Georgia colony founder James Oglethorpe laid out the Savannah street and city-park square grids, or how Oglethorpe made friends with Yamacraw chief Tomachichi to made the colony safe and secure, or how Casimir Pulaski died from wounds in a Revolutionary War battle in Savannah, or how General William Tecumseh Sherman spared Savannah from going up in flames like he and his army had done to other southern towns on his march north in the late stages of the Civil War and set up his Savannah headquarters in the Green Meldrin home off Madison Square, or how Sherman's troops hellaciously vandalized the downtown Colonial Park Cemetery -- established in 1750 -- to the point that it was impossible to return many strewn gravestones to their original spots. (Afterward, the city erected a brick wall on the cemetery's far east afixed the unreturned grave markers to that wall.) 

There's also a story of how Martin Luther King gave an early version of his "I Have a Dream" speech outside Second African Baptist Church of Savannah at some point before delivering the famous version during the March on Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963. The Savannah version is mentioned quite frequently in sundry MLK tribute sites online, including one on the church's own website. The problem I came across, however, is that none of the "mentions" offers a specific date for King's speech in Savannah, although one mention claims it came "in 1963"; mostly, they simply say it cam before the March on Washington. I find that very unsettling. 

And for the decade that Oglethrope lived in Georgia, Savannah was a rare southern community in which slavery was prohibited (and yet, at the same time Catholics were banned from the city). Once Oglethorpe returned to England in 1743, slavery was again permitted. A major thoroughfare and a city square are named for Ogelthorpe.

We also learned how the city's original southern border was Oglethorpe Avenue, which means the city was quite compact in its early years. Today, the historic district itself -- including the expansive Forsyth Park.  

Well, enough of a history lesson today. This initial post is devoted to photos I shot in the city during our stay, most of which were taken on the second full day. Tomorrow's post will be devoted to some art paintings by Tiffani Taylor that we came across at the Andaz and Hyatt-Regency hotels. I had told of our "find" of her Savannah art gallery on Whitaker Street in my posts from the most recent previous visit. Well, we were surprised and saddened this month to learn she had closed the gallery in December 2022, but several downtown businesses -- the Andaz and Hyatt-Regency and the 45 Bistro in the historic Marshall House -- have agreed to hang some of her work. We made it to the first two, but not 45 Bistro.

A subsequent post will be devoted to something new we did, which was to take a bus tour of Tybee Island, which in included a boat ride onto the waters adjacent to the island where we looked for dolphins. And yes, we saw some. A separate post will be devoted to a restaurant on Tybee which was unlike any I'd ever been to. I took so many pictures there -- probably the most I've taken at any eatery that I've photographed  -- that I felt it warranted a separate post.

I'll do the restaurant in the second post, and the dolphin-spotting excursion in the third installment. The boat ride enabled us to see scores of seabirds, too, many of which perched on the infrastructure of a shrimp boat we came across just off the island. The dolphins seemed to follow us as we approached the shrimp boat, so there are some picture of both dolphins and seabirds with the shrimp boat.

After the dolphin-spotting post, I'll devote two posts to photos from some shops, eateries and art galleries we visited before concluding the series with a post about a fortuitous encounter I had in Forsyth Square during the visit. 

For now, enjoy today's photos from our walk around the historic district on our second full day. I begin (with the lead-off image) with a shot of the building that housed the first headquarters of the Girls Scouts of America. Another history lesson you'll learn if/when you take the trolley tour of Savannah is the story of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts. These original headquarters are located at 333 Drayton Street; Low's birthplace, in a home at 10 E. Oglethorpe Ave., was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1965.   

Above and first seven photos below: I begin this batch of photos with generic looks of the downtown area that I don't recall ever photographing before. The fourth photo below is a view of Broughton. The two below it are perspective and closeup of the historic Marshall House, which dates to 1851. It was occupied by Union troopers when General Sherman arrived in Savannah near the end of the Civil War, and it was used as a Union hospital. Savannah supposedly has many stories (real or otherwise) of haunted places, and our tour guide made a point to mention how this building is probably the most haunted of them all. You can read more about the hotel's haunted legends by following the link in this sentence.       

If you've never been to Savannah before, here's a heads up if you plan to go there in the future: You will see the acronym SCAD all over the place. SCAD stands for Savannah College of Art and Design, one of the largest -- if not the largest -- art schools in the United States. Through the years, the school has purchased properties or buildings and converted them into needed school academic and residential facilities, even though many of them are scattered all over town. Fortunately, the school provides shuttle buses, so students have transportation to get to classes or other facilities when they need to. One of those buses is pictured above, juxtaposed with the school's Trustees Theater on Broughton Street. I'd not encountered an opportunity juxtapose multiple SCAD properties in a photo until I composed this shot. Our trolley tour guide gave SCAD and its students huge props in helping to revitalize the city's decaying downtown a couple of decades ago. It certainly is a destination city today. Just around the corner from where I shot the SCAD bus above is the historic Lucas Theatre for the Arts (see photo below), which escape the wrecking ball in 1976 and now receives financial support from SCAD.    

Above: A "Y" shaped tree in one of the two dozen or so neighborhood square. 

Above: I photographed (both inside and out) St. John the Baptist Catholic Cathedral on my first visit to Savannah in 2017, but I didn't have a shot I liked from this angle until the recent visit. 

Lee Ann and I debated doing the hour and a half trolley tour or taking a carriage-ride tour (shown above), which would have been a first for us in Savannah. We went with the trolley tour (no regrets), but maybe next time ... 

We have passed Clary's Cafe (above) at 404 Abercorn St. on almost all our visits, but we've never actually stopped in. Maybe because it seems like its quarters are cramped. Still, it remains on our "to do" list for future visits. I came across these British flags (below) also while on our walk. 

 

Above: These rent-a-bikes are available for SCAD students, I suppose if they are interested in getting around in a green-friendly manner. 

First flower interlude (above). I came across this daisy (I think) while in Forsyth Square, where I also came across the familiar horn musician below. I say "familiar" because I'd photographed him performing in Forsyth on at least one previous visit.  

Above: I couldn't pass on an opportunity to get another shot from this vantage point, which comes at the north entrance (looking south) to Forsyth with the central fountain in the distance. 

Above: Another repeat shot I made is the exterior of the Mercer-Williams house on Monterey Square. The house was famous in the Clint Eastwood film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, starring Kevin Spacey and John Cusack. I've read the John Berendt book and I've seen the movie three times, and yet I still learned more about the film on our trolley tour on the recent visit. Such as the explanation of the title. A portion of the script looks at the practice of voodoo in Savannah, and "garden" (instead of "cemetery") is a word often used to describe a place where a lot of high society or power brokers are buried. And according legend, voodoo practitioners know that if they intend to cast spells in a cemetery, they have a one hour window, 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., to do so. They also know that in the half-hour before midnight, spells in which they intend to do good are to be cast; spells to do evil are reserved for the half-hour immediately after midnight.   

Above: Immediately next door to the Mercer-Williams House is this duplex, which is laden with iron work, which our tour guide said -- if I remember this correctly -- the original owners erected as barriers to their next door neighbors. And those neighbors happened to be sisters! 

Second flower interlude: This was in a garden bed along one side of Monterey Square. 

Lee Ann and I decided that we'd use a portion of our walk to stroll several blocks of the Jones Street, which is said to be the prettiest street in the city. The perspective photo should help show why. The next five photos below are also from Jones Street. In several of these, I tried to use the snaking branches of the old oaks to frame or otherwise enhance the composition. But the first two below are outside the famous Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room restaurant, also on Jones Street. We had dined there, which features family-style servings and operates on a cash-only basis, on our first visit in March 2017. 

  

A fountain in another neighborhood square (above), and Telfair art students (below), practicing their en plain air skills in Telfaire Square, where you'll find the Telfair and Jepson art museums nearby. From another angle in the square in the second photo below, one of the students is included in a shot of the Telfair Museum facade in the background. 

Above and next three below: Some more generic shots of the merchants district in historic Savannah, beginning (above) with another section of Broughton Street.