Savannah Audio Tour: Echoes, Icons & Legends of Southern Splendor

This is the Nathanael Greene Monument. Check out the artwork in your app to see a portrait of the man himself. Greene was born in Rhode Island and raised as a pacifist Quaker, meaning he belonged to a Christian denomination that strictly opposed all forms of violence and war. Yet, when the American Revolution broke out, he chose to fight, eventually becoming one of George Washington's most trusted generals and leading campaigns right here in Georgia. As a reward for his service, the state of Georgia gave him a sprawling plantation. Sadly, Greene died just a few years later in 1786. His death was a terrible blow to his loved ones, but the heartbreak for his family was only just beginning. Take a moment to look at the massive stone blocks forming the base of this monument. Imagine the famous French military leader, the Marquis de Lafayette, standing on this very spot in 1825 to lay the cornerstone. He was here to honor an American hero, but he was also honoring a family completely shattered by grief. In the spring of 1793, Greene's eighteen-year-old son, George Washington Greene, took a canoe trip up the Savannah River with a friend. The young man had only recently returned home from France, where he had been personally educated under the supervision of Lafayette. The river was swollen and treacherous... and the canoe capsized. George drowned. His remains were placed alongside his father's in a burial vault at Colonial Park Cemetery. It took decades to complete this monument. The state even authorized a lottery in 1826 to raise thirty-five thousand dollars... which would be over a million dollars today... just to fund the project. The architect patterned the monument in the Egyptian style of Cleopatra's Needle, a tall, four-sided pillar ending in a pyramid shape. You can get a clear view of its stark architectural lines in the second photo on your screen. But while this grand stone pillar stood proudly in the square, the bodies of Greene and his son were lost. During the American Civil War, occupying Union forces vandalized the cemetery, and the exact location of the family vault was forgotten. For over a century, the brilliant general and his tragically young son sat unidentified in the dark. Ironically, they were resting right next to the remains of John Maitland, Greene's greatest British rival from the Revolutionary War. It was not until 1901 that a search team finally identified them. They knew they had found the elder Greene because three metal military uniform buttons and a pair of heavy French silk gloves had miraculously survived intact on the skeletal hands. Father and son were brought here and reinterred directly beneath this granite shaft in 1902.

Back in 1736, a young, intensely serious minister arrived to serve this parish. His name was John Wesley. Long before he became a legendary figure who catalyzed the global Methodist movement, he was a stressed out young missionary caught in a massive colonial soap opera. Enter Sophy Hopkey. She was the charming niece of Savannah's chief magistrate, and Wesley fell head over heels for her. But Wesley was a man divided. He agonized over his strict commitment to clerical celibacy, a religious vow to remain unmarried, and his desperate desire to be a pioneering missionary. He kept Sophy waiting in a romantic limbo. Finally, frustrated by his endless hesitation, Sophy abruptly broke off the courtship and married another man named William Williamson. Wesley was absolutely devastated. Convinced that Sophy's spiritual devotion was rapidly declining, he retaliated in the most public way possible. During a Sunday service, Wesley strictly enforced a minor technicality in the Book of Common Prayer, the official rulebook for church ceremonies. Because Sophy had not given prior notice of her intention to take Holy Communion, Wesley publicly denied her the sacred ritual. It was a calculated, devastating public humiliation. But the move backfired spectacularly. The young colony exploded in outrage. Sophy's new husband filed a massive defamation lawsuit against Wesley, and a local magistrate issued a warrant for his arrest. Suddenly, Wesley was facing severe legal trouble, a hostile trial he believed was a sham, and a congregation completely fed up with his rigid, unforgiving discipline. The pressure became unbearable. In December 1737, Wesley fled Georgia in the dead of night, sneaking away under the cover of darkness to escape his mounting legal battles. He later wrote that he shook the dust off his feet as he left Savannah behind. The actual building where all this dramatic tension went down did not survive. A devastating fire wiped out the first permanent church in 1796, and a massive hurricane completely destroyed the congregation's second attempt in 1804. Finally, in 1838, the resilient parish constructed the grand Neo-Classical masterpiece you are looking at right now. Take a quick look at the before and after image in the app to see how this incredible street view has stood the test of time.

It was commissioned in 1816 by Richard Richardson, a massively wealthy shipping merchant and domestic slave trader who wanted a house that proved his supreme status. He hired an English architect, a young visionary named William Jay, who actually drew the plans in England and shipped them over. Richardson spared no expense, even installing Savannah's very first indoor plumbing system, utilizing massive attic cisterns to catch rainwater that supplied a basement bathing room. But this grand monument to his success rapidly became a house of horrors. Shortly after moving in, Richardson lost his wife Frances and two of their children to a brutal yellow fever epidemic. Then came the financial panic of 1819, followed by a massive fire that destroyed half of Savannah in 1820. He was completely ruined. In a harsh twist of fate, the very bank he had served as president of seized this mansion in 1824. The bank leased the home out as an elegant boarding house. Pull out your phone and take a look at the first picture. That is the home's side veranda, wrapped in elaborate cast iron shaped like swirling acanthus leaves. In 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette stayed here and stood right on that balcony, addressing an adoring crowd in both English and French. In 1830, a politician named George Welshman Owens bought the estate at auction for ten thousand dollars, which is roughly a third of a million today. He brought his wife, six children, and up to fifteen enslaved laborers. For decades, the museum here used the carriage house out back as a simple gift shop, ignoring its true history. But renovations in the 1990s uncovered one of the oldest and best preserved urban slave quarters in the American South. Tap to the next photo on your screen to see the brick exterior of these quarters. This is where a woman named Emma lived. She was an enslaved nursemaid forced to raise the Owens children, spending far more time with them than their own parents did. She had a biological daughter of her own on the property, but the brutal demands of bondage meant she had to prioritize her enslavers' children over her own flesh and blood. Inside those quarters, the ceiling is painted a striking shade called haint blue. This was a deep tradition in Gullah culture, an African American community of the coastal South, used to ward off ghosts and malevolent spirits. It is actually the largest surviving swath of haint blue paint in North America. Even after slavery was abolished in 1865, the carriage house was simply renamed servant quarters. Stripped of education and resources, many formerly enslaved people had no choice but to stay, continuing their grueling labor to maintain this very estate.

Before the Lows and Gordons took over, the original 1820 home in this district belonged to James Moore Wayne. He was a wealthy slaveowner and an influential Supreme Court Justice who helped push through the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, an expansive legal ruling that denied citizenship to African Americans and protected the expansion of slavery. When the Civil War erupted, it immediately tore through the social fabric of this city, forcing neighbors and kin to draw hard battle lines. Political beliefs and war completely fractured Savannah's elite families. Despite his devastating rulings protecting slavery, Wayne remained fiercely loyal to the Union, refusing to step down from the Supreme Court even when Georgia seceded. His son took the opposite path, resigning his United States Army commission to serve as a Confederate General, tearing the family apart. By then, Wayne had sold the family estate to the Gordon family, and Juliette Gordon Low was born there in 1860. She later moved into this building, the Andrew Low House. Check out the image on your app to get a closer look at its Greek Revival design, specifically the entry portico inspired by the ancient Tower of the Winds in Athens. Juliette's adult life here was incredibly difficult. She went completely deaf in one ear after a doctor accidentally punctured her eardrum trying to remove a grain of good-luck rice from her wedding. Her marriage to William Low was a disaster, plagued by his drinking and a very public affair with an actress. He even withheld her money to force a divorce, but he died suddenly of a seizure in 1905. When Juliette discovered he had secretly left his fortune to his mistress, she fought back and won a five hundred thousand dollar settlement, which equals roughly fifteen million dollars today. That massive financial victory gave her the independence to found the Girl Scouts in 1912. Watch the decades slip by at the historic Andrew Low House, where a 1939 black-and-white snapshot transitions into vibrant modern photography while the grand architecture remains beautifully preserved. Today, the National Society of the Colonial Dames uses this house as its headquarters, and you can explore the district buildings any day of the week from 10 AM to 5 PM.

That is James Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia. When we look at monuments like this, it is easy to see just the triumph, the military commander holding his sword. But the real reason this man sailed across the Atlantic to build a new world is rooted in absolute heartbreak. Back in England, Oglethorpe had a dear friend named Robert Castell. Castell was an architect who fell into financial ruin and was thrown into a debtor's prison, a harsh jail specifically for people who owed money. Because Castell could not afford to pay the jailers extortionate fees for better treatment, he was forced into a cell with inmates suffering from smallpox. Castell caught the disease and died in 1729. This devastating loss shattered Oglethorpe. It pushed him to investigate the horrific conditions of British jails and ultimately sparked a bold vision. He wanted to create a philanthropic utopia, a fresh start for the worthy poor. That vision became Savannah, established in 1733. To honor that legacy, local patriotic groups banded together in the early nineteen hundreds to build a grand monument. They raised thirty eight thousand dollars, which is over a million dollars today. They hired sculptor Daniel Chester French and architect Henry Bacon. Take a look at the image on your app to see the incredible detail of French's nine foot bronze figure. Notice how Oglethorpe holds his sword. It is unsheathed but pointing downward, a deliberate choice showing him as a resolute protector facing south toward the Spanish threat, rather than an active attacker. French loved this piece so much he called it his life's finest work, and he and Bacon would later go on to design the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Placing Oglethorpe here required a major physical shift in the city's landscape. In nineteen ten, two busts of Confederate generals were evicted from this square and relocated to Forsyth Park. The city was quite literally reshaping its identity, physically moving monuments of a fractured, tragic war to make room for a man whose utopian dream started it all. Over a century later, the towering monument has developed a rich patina, while the canopy of live oaks in the square has grown dramatically around it. The dedication ceremony in nineteen ten was a massive spectacle. Thousands gathered as the flags of Georgia and England were pulled away. The organizers even relocated the annual Thanksgiving football rivalry game between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Auburn Tigers to a nearby field just to capitalize on the enormous crowds. You might think unveiling a monument to Georgia's founder would bring the home team good luck, but the Bulldogs suffered a crushing twenty six to zero defeat.

Wandering this grid is like stepping back in time, but the cost of preservation was steep. Buildings like the elegant Davenport House were nearly bulldozed into parking lots before locals banded together to save them. Yet, preservation here goes deeper than just saving pretty architecture. Beneath the surface, Savannah's historic spaces often served as secret sanctuaries for those escaping persecution or slavery, acting as a hidden refuge for those seeking freedom. The most powerful example is the First African Baptist Church. Take a look at your screen to see the 1933 exterior of this sanctuary. Founded in 1788 by Andrew Bryan, a man who purchased his own freedom, the current structure was completed in 1859. It was built by free African Americans and enslaved people who molded the bricks by hand after laboring in the fields all day. Beyond its religious significance, this church operated as a vital stop on the Underground Railroad. To protect everyone involved, no written records were kept. Instead, the building itself held the codes. The ceiling featured a Nine Patch Quilt design, a subtle architectural pattern designating the church as a safe house. The most ingenious concealment lay beneath the sanctuary floorboards, in a four foot high space where runaway slaves hid. The floor featured holes shaped like a Congolese Cosmogram, an African prayer symbol representing birth, life, death, and rebirth. While they looked decorative, they were actually breathing holes for the people hiding below. Up in the balcony, pews nailed to the floor by enslaved members still bear faint carvings of West African Arabic script. Savannah was a city of deep contrasts, relying heavily on the grueling labor of Irish immigrants to load ships with cotton. You can actually see how beautifully the striking red brick Cotton Exchange has been preserved on your app, standing firm as the riverfront evolved.

It is hard to believe looking at this grand architectural marvel today, but when Savannah was first founded, Roman Catholics were strictly forbidden from settling here. The English trustees who ran the colony were completely paranoid. They feared that Catholic settlers would be secretly loyal to the Spanish authorities down in Florida rather than to the English crown right here in Georgia. That early prejudice finally faded after the American Revolution. By 1799, French Catholic refugees fleeing uprisings in Haiti established the first real church here, which eventually became a spiritual home for free Black Haitians in the early nineteenth century. But getting to the magnificent building you are standing in front of took some serious maneuvering. In the 1870s, Bishop Ignatius Persico orchestrated a strategic land swap with the Sisters of Mercy, trading away another diocesan lot just to secure this prime footprint. And here is the genuinely funny quirk of history. After all that political wheeling and dealing to build the new Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, when the doors finally opened, it was dedicated as Our Lady of Perpetual Help. It kept that completely different title for about ten years before quietly reverting to its intended namesake. This building perfectly captures the constant push and pull of Savannah... a place constantly striving to cement its legacy, even when tragedy strikes. In 1898, a terrifying fire ripped right through the sanctuary. Imagine the crowds of locals standing helplessly in the square right behind you, watching the intense heat cause the walls to crumble and the original stained glass windows to explode into shards. When the ash settled, almost nothing was left but the outside brick walls and those two newly constructed spires. But the congregation refused to let their legacy become a pile of rubble. Take a peek at your screen to see the breathtaking sanctuary they built from the ashes. The brilliant light you see filters through eighty one masterful stained glass windows imported from the Austrian Tyrol. The soaring Neo Gothic design... an architectural style known for pointed arches and cross ribbed vault ceilings... was intentionally built to draw your eyes upward, making you feel closer to the divine. While the vintage streetlamps and vehicles of 1936 have long since been replaced, the towering French Gothic spires of Savannahs beloved cathedral remain a timeless fixture of the historic district. If you want to experience those slack jawed stares for yourself, the cathedral welcomes visitors daily from 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM.

You might notice it shares a bit of architectural DNA with the Owens-Thomas House we visited earlier. Both homes use a clever trick of placing large interior columns inside the foyer, which is the main entrance hall, to firmly separate the formal greeting areas for guests from the private, hidden rooms used only by the family. This grand estate was the boyhood home of Moxley Sorrel. Before the Civil War began, Moxley was just an ordinary young bank clerk living right here. But when the conflict erupted, he traveled to Virginia and threw himself into the fight. His courage was unmistakable. Despite being wounded three times across major campaigns, he was promoted to brigadier general at just twenty-six years old, making him one of the youngest generals in the entire Confederate army. He was fiercely dedicated, and his peers later praised him as the greatest staff officer they had ever seen. But a building this old rarely survives without a few scars. People are always trying to shape a property to fit their own legacy. In the mid-twentieth century, a businessman named A.J. Cohen Jr. literally built a large brick addition onto the side of the house so he could open an upscale women's clothing store. For decades, the original, elegant footprint of this mansion was buried under commercial brick. Then, in nineteen ninety-six, a man named Stephen Bader bought the estate and immediately fired up the bulldozers. He tore away that brick addition to restore the home's original layout. A few years later, a top architectural curator from Colonial Williamsburg came down to inspect the house. He actually confirmed that a Victorian dividing wall and a stairway the new owners had demolished were indeed later additions. By tearing them down, they had successfully resurrected the original, open layout the Sorrel family built. It is a constant tug-of-war here between altering a building for modern use and meticulously peeling back the layers to rescue the past. If you want to see exactly how much this property has transformed over the decades, take a quick peek at the comparison photo on your screen. Today, the house operates as a museum and is open daily from eleven in the morning until eleven at night, except Monday through Wednesday when they open a bit later in the evening.

What you are looking at is the result of a massive, wildly extravagant promise. Back in 1850, a wealthy English cotton merchant named Charles Green signed a marriage contract with his second wife, Lucy, promising to build her an absolute palace. He spent ninety three thousand dollars on this Gothic Revival masterpiece in 1853, which is roughly three point five million dollars today. The newlyweds actually spent their honeymoon touring Europe just to shop for the house. They shipped back flawless Carrara marble and shimmering gold leaf mirrors from Austria. If you pull up your screen, check out the original freestanding iron staircase they installed inside. It is a stunning piece of mid nineteenth century engineering. But underneath all that splendor, a massive scandal was brewing. Charles Green was legally a British citizen, but his loyalties were secretly poured into the Confederacy. Early in the Civil War, Green and his business partner were suddenly ambushed and arrested by Pinkerton detectives right after returning from Europe. He was accused of arranging foreign loans to buy Confederate weapons and was locked up in a Boston Harbor military prison for three months. It turns out, his covert activities were incredibly extensive. He even helped secure a blockade running ship carrying one of the most valuable military cargoes to reach the South during the entire war. When Union General William T. Sherman captured the city in 1864, the war arrived right at Green's doorstep. Fearing his opulent home would be incinerated, Green rode out, found Sherman, and practically insisted the General use the mansion as his headquarters. Look at your app to see a historic illustration of Sherman's troops occupying the grand entrance hall. It was right in this house that Sherman wrote his famous telegram to President Lincoln, offering him the city of Savannah and twenty five thousand bales of cotton as a Christmas gift. The irony? Every single bale of that confiscated cotton belonged to Charles Green. His strategic hospitality saved the building, but ruined his fortune. This mansion also hosted the Savannah Colloquy, a profoundly historic meeting where Sherman sat down with twenty African American ministers. Their spokesperson, Garrison Frazier, eloquently argued for the independence of newly freed people, directly inspiring Sherman's famous order allocating forty acres and a mule to freed families. Today, St. John's Episcopal Church owns the property. Miraculously, over a hundred pieces of Green's original antique furniture were recently returned to the house from France by the estate of his grandson. You can tour the interior Tuesday through Saturday from ten to four.

Welcome to Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room. Savannah is a city that fiercely guards its past, often fighting a tug of war between dramatic histories and the deep desire to preserve its soul. Here, legacy is not carved into stone. It is served on a platter. In 1943, Sema Wilkes started helping in the kitchen of a boardinghouse where her husband was staying. A boardinghouse was simply a private home providing lodgers with a room and daily meals. Growing up on a farm, Sema had cooked since she was seven. She soon took over with a simple dream of offering homestyle Southern cooking, building incredible bonds with local farmers who dug sweet potatoes for her harvests. By 1965, the food was so wildly popular that Sema closed the lodging business to focus entirely on feeding the public. She actually refused to put a sign out front until 1987, relying entirely on word of mouth. What makes this place magical is how fiercely her family protects her vision. Today, managed by her granddaughter and great grandson, the restaurant still uses Sema's time tested recipes. They kept her old school rules, too. Guests are escorted in shifts of ten to sit at large communal tables. There are no reservations, it is cash only, and there is no menu. You just sit down and pass steaming bowls of fried chicken to perfect strangers. When you finish, you are expected to carry your own dirty plates to the kitchen. This deliberate choice to foster connection means everyone is treated equally. When President Obama visited in 2010, right after learning he had borderline high cholesterol, he looked at his massive plate of comfort food and joked to the press pool, the traveling group of journalists, not to tell Michelle. Hollywood stars like the cast of Magic Mike XXL have dined here, yet they wait in the same long line as local workers. Of course, Savannah always adds a twist of scandal to its traditions. Jim Williams, the wealthy antiques dealer famous from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, actually had Mrs. Wilkes cater to his jail cell while awaiting his murder trial, throwing a lavish luncheon of roast lamb and cornbread behind bars.

This massive institution started as a scrappy family dream back in 1978. Paula Wallace was an elementary school teacher who realized her students had nowhere in the region to continue their artistic pursuits. So, she and her family took a massive leap, selling off their personal belongings to purchase a towering Romanesque Revival red brick building, the Savannah Volunteer Guards Armory. If you check your screen and look at the seventh image, you can see that very flagship building, now called Poetter Hall. They started with just four staff members and seventy one students. Today, the university owns sixty seven historic buildings across the grid of downtown Savannah, meticulously restoring old masonry and ironwork that had been left to decay. But this incredible story of architectural rescue hides a profoundly dark chapter. By the early nineteen nineties, the school was expanding rapidly, yet deep unrest was brewing. In 1991, profound tragedy struck the campus. An architecture professor named Juan Bertotto took his own life in a highly public manner by setting himself on fire. This horrifying event was soon followed by two students jumping to their deaths. The administration responded with intense secrecy, which quickly ignited outrage and paranoia among the students and staff. Frustrated students demanded transparency about where their tuition fees were going and formed their own rebellious newspaper. When a group of faculty members rallied behind the students, SCAD fired twelve of those professors. The campus practically exploded. And I mean that literally. Someone detonated a pipe bomb at the administration building, and two more went off later that year at the Savannah Civic Center, which we walked past way back at the start of our tour. Instead of looking inward, administrators claimed these bombings and protests were a massive corporate conspiracy. They pointed fingers at a rival school, the New York based School of Visual Arts, which had just announced plans to open a branch right here in Savannah. This sparked an all out war. SCAD filed a hundred and three million dollar lawsuit against their rival to protect their reputation. Former SCAD professors even countersued, accusing the college of violating the RICO Act, a complex federal law normally used to prosecute mafia bosses and organized crime syndicates. The legal battle took bizarre local twists, even involving a fired community booster who was locally famous for running around Savannah dressed as Batman. Eventually, the bitter lawsuit was settled right before trial, and the rival school retreated from the city entirely.

Now, you might be thinking this building looks an awful lot like a traditional Christian church. That was entirely intentional. If you pull up the side view on your app, you can see the building was designed in a cruciform plan, which simply means the layout forms the shape of a cross. Back in 1876, the congregation deliberately chose this popular architectural style to blend in with the neighboring churches. They wanted to link their house of worship in dignity with the surrounding community. It worked so well that a local woman actually wrote a letter to the synagogue president, absolutely thrilled that they had built a church in the shape of a cross, and she welcomed them to the Christian fold. Of course, she completely misunderstood. It was not a conversion... it was a strategic compromise. It was a conscious choice to find harmony in a new world while fiercely guarding their ancient traditions. And they definitely guarded their history. Today, the museum inside holds a rare deerskin Torah scroll brought from London in 1733. It miraculously survived a massive fire in 1829 that completely destroyed their very first wooden synagogue. But the story of how those founders even got to Georgia is a wild ride. In the early seventeen hundreds, many of the original founders were living in secret in Lisbon, hiding from the terrifying Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition. One of them, a brilliant physician named Diogo Nunes Ribeiro, pulled off a breathtaking escape. He hosted a party, managed to smuggle his entire family aboard an English ship right under the authorities noses, and the captain immediately raised anchor and sailed them to safety in London. There, he openly returned to his Jewish faith and changed his name to Samuel Nunez. In 1733, Dr. Nunez and a group of forty two Jewish immigrants sailed to Savannah. When they arrived, they found the brand new colony collapsing from a deadly yellow fever epidemic. The settlements only doctor had already died. Dr. Nunez immediately stepped in and his medical expertise curbed the disease, saving Savannah from total ruin. The colonial leaders back in London had strictly forbidden Jewish settlement, but the founder of Georgia, James Oglethorpe, was so profoundly grateful for the doctors life saving work that he openly defied his superiors and granted the Jewish families land, giving them a true hidden refuge.