Small Slices of Historic Savannah

Posted on March 15, 2022 by admin

Nice day here in northern Illinois — mid-50s degrees F. by early afternoon, little wind and bright sun. I ate lunch on my deck today for the first time this year.

I haven’t read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994), nor seen the movie based on the book (1997). Maybe I should, if for no other reason than we happened by the prime locus of the story during our visit to Savannah, as we passed through Monterey Square: the Mercer House, where one Jim Williams shot one Danny Hansford to death in 1981.

Quite a story. After four trials, Williams was ultimately acquitted of murder, though he didn’t live much longer after the acquittal. The story lives on, however, at least as something that still seems to attract tourists to Savannah.

“According to records from Visit Savannah, about 5,010,000 people visited Savannah in 1993, spending $587 million; in 1994, visitors increased to 5,029,000, contributing $629 million to the local economy,” the Savannah Morning News reported in 2019. “The following year, in 1995, visitor numbers jumped to 5,348,000 and spending increased to $673.4 million.”

Could be a coincidence, though the News notes another bump up in visitors after the movie came out, without citing any numbers. Besides, it’s completely believable that people show up at a place in the wake of a bestselling book or popular movie featuring the place, and the more lurid the story, and exotic the setting, the better.

We wandered by plenty of other intriguing buildings in Savannah, some on our guided tour, others by happenstance. Our guide had a knack for telling stories about Savannah history, which has its fascinations. But he wasn’t so keen on the architecture of the city, which is visibly rich and varied.

Within sight of Johnson Square is Beaux-Arts Savannah City Hall, designed by local architect Hyman Witcover and completed in 1906. We didn’t get any closer, but it was still easy to see the detail that I liked: the gold leaf dome, reportedly Dahlonega-area gold.

A building on Chippewa Square: the Philbrick-Eastman House, these days corporate headquarters for a chain of convenience stories.

“Built on one of Savannah’s original trust lots by Irish-born architect Charles B. Cluskey, the house features Doric columns, 14-foot ceilings, elaborate crown moldings and the original oak floors,” the company web site notes.

Also on Chippewa Square, 15 W. Perry St., built in 1867. You might call it an example of the garden-variety historic structures that populates so much of the historic district. Doesn’t make the must-see lists, but its like are still essential to the historic fabric of the city.

Just north of Forsyth Park on Bull St. is the Armstrong House, dating from 1919 and built for Savannah business mogul George Ferguson Armstrong. Or, as the current owner, hotelier Richard C. Kessler, is wont to call the place, the Armstrong Kessler Mansion.

“Designed by world-renowned Beaux Arts architect Henrik Wallin, the original Armstrong Mansion is the only Italian Renaissance Revival home in Savannah listed in the authoritative A Field Guide to American Houses,” the mansion’s web site says. It was restored in the 1960s by Jim Williams, he of such protracted legal problems in the 1980s, and the 2010s restoration undertaken by Kessler left it looking spiffy indeed.

In the Armstrong yard sits a copy of “Il Porcellino,” the bronze wild boar of Florence.

A remarkable number of copies exist in places as diverse as Sydney Hospital in Australia, Butchart Gardens in British Columbia, Country Club Plaza in Kansas City and a lot of other places, according to Wiki. I won’t bother to try to confirm all of them. Curiously, the page doesn’t list the one in Savannah.

Besides the Methodist church we managed to enter — just as Sunday services ended — we passed by a number of religious sites that were closed. On Bull St. is the Independent Presbyterian Church.

There’s a presidential connection. Maybe two. The original church on the site, according to the Georgia Historic Commission plaque on site, was dedicated in 1819 “with impressive services that were attended by President James Monroe.”

That church burned down late in the 19th century. The current church was completed in 1891, with the architect, William G. Preston, following “the general plan of the former structure,” the plaque notes, adding that “Ellen Louise Axson, who was born in the manse of the Independent Presbyterian Church in 1860, was married in 1885 to Woodrow Wilson… in a room in the manse.”

On Monterey Square is Congregation Mickve Israel, one of the oldest synagogues in the U.S.

The current Gothic Revival structure — unusual for a synagogue building — was designed by Henry G. Harrison and completed in 1878 (some interior shots are here).

The Jewish presence in Savannah, and indeed Georgia, started much earlier, when a group of mostly Sephardic Jews of Spanish and Portuguese extraction arrived in the brand-new colony in 1733. They had previously fled to London after finding the Iberian peninsula inhospitable (they did expect the Spanish Inquisition, it seems), and it was this group that organized the synagogue in 1735.

The first trustees of Georgia banned Jews (and Catholics) from the colony, but that had no more effect than banning rum, which they also tried to do. Gen. Oglethorpe apparently decided that he needed all the colonists he could get. The colonists apparently decided they needed all the rum they could get.

Another (tenuous) presidential connection is cited on the synagogue’s Georgia Historic Commission plaque:

“In 1789, the Congregation received a letter from President George Washington which stated in part: ‘May the same wonder-working Deity who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors, planted them in the promised land — whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation — still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah.’ ”

Man, presidents don’t write letters like that anymore.

We wandered by the Cathedral of St. John of Baptist twice, but found it closed each time. That’s too bad, since I understand the interior is striking, as depicted in this breathless description.

Religious émigrés founded this congregation as well, in this case those fleeing revolutions in France and Haiti in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The current building dates from the 1870s, when Ephraim Francis Baldwin designed the church in a High Victorian Gothic style. His was an interesting practice: he specialized in churches, but also railroad stations. There was growing demand for both back then, after all.

“The Church of St. John the Baptist became a cathedral in 1850 when the Diocese of Savannah was established with the Right Reverend Francis X. Gartland as its first bishop,” its Georgia Historic Commission plaque says. “The Cathedral was dedicated at this site on April 30, 1876. A fire in 1898 destroyed much of the structure. It was quickly rebuilt and opened again in 1900. Another major restoration took place in 2000.”

Savannah Walkabouts

Posted on March 14, 2022 by admin

Unusual, for a U.S. city anyway, the streets of the Savannah Historic District form a grid linking a series of large green squares, meaning that in our time you’ll encounter a pleasant city park every few blocks, once you’re in the city center. The modern streets and squares hew to a plan implemented by James Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia.

“Oglethorpe laid out the city around a series of squares and laid out the streets in a grid pattern,” the Georgia Historical Society says. “Each square had a small community of colonists living around it and had separate lots dedicated to community buildings.

“Noble Jones was the first surveyor in the new colony and helped Oglethorpe fulfill his dream of a planned city. Oglethorpe also worked with Colonel William Bull to lay out the new city. Bull came from South Carolina and served as the city’s first architect, overseeing the design and construction of the earliest buildings.”

We did two long walks through the historic city, one each last Sunday and Monday. The first walk was guided, following a straight course on Bull Street from Johnson Square through to Wright Square, Chippewa Square, Madison Square — crossing the remarkably picturesque Jones Street — and Monterey Square, ending at the rectangular Forsyth Park and its impressive fountain. We also crossed Oglethorpe Street; like in many cities, old pioneers later became streets.

Our second walk was more meandering, starting near Colonial Park Cemetery and heading north toward the Savannah River, which we eventually reached, exploring the cobblestoned streets and alleys and brick buildings that used to be the heart of the waterfront cotton market. These days, the place attracts tourists en masse to its restaurants, bars and shops, and we joined the masse for a little while, taking in the view of the Savannah River and the Talmadge Memorial Bridge.

Savannah has one of the lusher downtowns I’ve ever seen, marked by a profusion of tall trees and bushes and ground cover. The squares were especially lush places.

Flowers, too, though I think there will be more as spring matures into summer.

Some of the streets were almost as lush. This is Jones Street, famed for its handsome houses, but also shady trees. You’re going to need shade most of the year in Savannah.

Many of the squares feature memorials of one kind or another. In Johnson Square stands a memorial to Nathanael Greene, Quaker general of the Revolution who had a gift for inspiring pyrrhic victories among his British opponents. Not only is this a memorial to Greene, he’s buried under it.

A design by William Strickland, the Philadelphian who moved to Nashville who did the Second Bank of the United States, Tennessee State Capitol and a lot else besides.

In Chippewa Square, Gen. Oglethorpe stands looking out toward the state he founded, maybe enjoying the shade as well. Designed by Daniel Chester French, dedicated in 1910.

Casimir Pulaski, swashbuckling Polish cavalryman who died during the Siege of Savannah, is honored in Monterey Square with a memorial by Robert Launitz.

A number of other historic figures are honored in the squares, some of whose memorials we saw, such as that of William Jasper, a soldier who also died in the Siege of Savannah; John Wesley (as mentioned yesterday); and railroad exec William Washington Gordon, who was also a mayor of Savannah.

Gordon’s sizable late 19th-century memorial was built on top of the grave of Tomochichi, the Indian chief who allowed Oglethorpe to settle the site that would become Savannah. Tomochichi’s grave had previously been the site of a memorial to Native leader, but that had been lost to time before the Gordon memorial was erected. An interesting, if convoluted story, is told in academic detail here. Tomochichi has a separate memorial near the Gordon memorial.

A good many other memorials are scattered here and there in the squares and in between.

At the southern edge of the historic district is Forsyth Park, at 30 acres much larger than any of the city squares.

The park’s centerpiece is a splendid fountain, installed in 1858 and a creation of the same Bronx foundry that did the U.S. Capitol dome and, later, railings for the Brooklyn Bridge, among many other projects.

As charming a park as you’ll find anywhere. Sometimes life is a walk through the park, or better yet, through a lush historic district.

Savannah ’22

Posted on March 13, 2022 by admin

What to do during spring break on a three-night jaunt? Go somewhere that’s actually experiencing spring. A week ago Saturday, Ann and I flew to Savannah, Georgia, where the grass is green and the air warm, and the azaleas are in profuse bloom —

— and Spanish moss festoons tree after tree after tree, silver-gray and airy by day, slightly sinister by night, in the right light.

Besides pleasant flora, Savannah has much else to recommend it. I’ve known as much for years, but sometimes it takes years to get around to visiting even the most intriguing places.

We took long walks in the Savannah Historic District, which is enormous and very much lives up to its title, with street after street lined with the sort of aesthetic and storied buildings that speak of earlier times, both more genteel and more cruel. They also speak of restoration in the 20th and 21st centuries, and a new affluence for the city in our time.

We also spent time out from Savannah, as far afield as drives through the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge and through the beach town of Tybee Island, with a longer visit to Fort Pulaski National Monument.

Naturally, I had to visit Bonaventure Cemetery, famed in book and movie, and alive with other tourists and explosions of spring azaleas. And Spanish moss. Lots of Spanish moss on towering southern live oaks.

We ate well: plentiful seafood, kolaches as delightful as in Texas, hardy diner fare, innovative sliders and amazingly delicious fried chicken at a regional chain in suburban Savannah, our first meal after arrival and a tiresome experience in the long line to claim our rental car.

We slept well: I think I surprised Ann by booking a room at a one-of-a-kind inn a mile or so from the historic district, a sizable 1906 house renovated in the early 21st century for guests like us. Each room had its own theme, and the common areas were comfortable and ornate. Best of all, it really was an independent hotel, not a faux unique property of a high-priced boutique chain, and so I didn’t pay the moon.

We were also did a kind of Methodist pilgrimage, odd as that sounds. First, the only Savannah church we were able to enter during our visit was Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church, completed in 1890.

During our visit to Fort Pulaski NM the next day, we encountered the John Wesley Memorial.
The memorial says (among other things): John Wesley landed in America on this island, February 6, 1736. He was still an Anglican priest at the time.

That evening at dusk, we strolled into Savannah’s Reynolds Square, and there he stood.

The pilgrimage wasn’t planned. I don’t belong to that denomination, though of course I know that in earlier days, they ran with a pretty rough crowd.

St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral & The Holodomor Memorial (Again)

Posted on February 27, 2022 by admin

A few years ago, I visited St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral (of the Kyiv Patriarchate in the USA and Canada) in Bloomingdale, a suburb not far from us. The church was closed, but I was able to look at a number of things on the grounds, including the Holodomor Memorial. Seems like a good time to post more of those images.

The church exterior.

The Holodomor Memorial.

It was dedicated in 1993, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Stalin’s famine. Nearby is a newer memorial.

“This monument is dedicated to ‘Heaven’s Brigade’ and all heroes of Ukraine who sacrificed their lives for a free and independent Ukraine,” explains a plaque on this memorial, which was dedicated in 2015, the year after the Revolution of Dignity.

Charlotte 2017

Posted on February 20, 2022 by admin

Has it been five years since I visited Charleston? It has. Seems like an age ago, but so does everything before about two years ago. Still, it was a good trip, and it reminds me that I ought visit that part of the country again.

To facilitate my visit to Charleston, I flew in and out of Charlotte, driving from there. That was another place I’d never been but, interestingly, had been writing about as a real estate market for a few years at that point (I don’t any more).

I was able to spend a few hours looking around downtown Charlotte, which is actually known as Uptown Charlotte. It was a hopping real estate market at the time, with a lot of construction.

Along with fairly recent developments, such as this apartment tower (VUE, completed in 2010).

I also spotted some Uptown Charlotte artwork, such as “Grande Disco” (1974) by Arnaldo Pomodoro, a Milanese sculptor who’s still alive, at last report, at 95.

It’s in a plaza near the intersection of Tryon and Trade streets. At the four street corners of that intersection are four sculptures — allegories representing Commerce, Industry, Transportation, and The Future, by Raymond Kaskey.

I only have presentable pictures of two of them. Apparently this is Commerce, which was kicked off in the area in the 1830s when gold was discovered.

For Industry, a woman wearing textiles. Because that was an early industry in the region. More about the sculptures is at an article published by WCNC the same year I visited.

I can’t track down this memorable image, and I didn’t take notes, but it was on a brick wall not too far from Tryon St. Maybe it’s gone now.

Something that’s definitely not on Tryon St. any more, but it was when I wandered by in 2017: a memorial to Judah Benjamin.

“Though Benjamin had no connection to Charlotte — his only tie was a week he spent hiding there after the end of the Civil War — the United Daughters of the Confederacy presented the granite monument to the city [in 1948], choosing the spot of his supposed few days in hiding,” Smithsonian magazine says.

It was a dowdy thing, and I feel certain that the memorial was ignored by almost everyone until the summer of 2020. Then it got some attention.

“Steps away from the monument, a new Black Lives Matter street mural, commissioned by the city, burst into colorful view this summer [2020],” Smithsonian continues. “Around the same time, city workers finally extracted the Benjamin stone after a protestor spray-painted it with ‘BLM’ and took a sharp implement to it, though a spokesman says the city is ‘evaluating how best to preserve’ it.”

Charlestowne Mall Residuum

Posted on February 15, 2022 by admin

One reason I forgot the Super Bowl on Sunday was our excursion to St. Charles, Illinois. More specifically, we went to the Charlestowne Mall in the eastern part of that far suburb. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since we’d been there. A decade or more, probably.

So we were surprised to find the mall closed.

In the greater scheme of retail things, that’s not a surprise. A lot of malls have closed in recent years. I’ve written about that trend any number of times, but never had any reason to cover the Charlestowne Mall in particular, so I didn’t know its fate.

The mall opened in 1991, just ahead of the long slide for department stores, and when the notion of online commerce was still in the realm of speculative fiction. In other words, at an inauspicious moment for regional malls, but no one knew it at the time.

Most of the mall closed in 2017. Three of the four anchor department stores had gone dark by then, leaving only Von Maur open. As it still is.

The other open business at the mall is an 18-plex movie theater, which is where we were going. We had to circle around most of the mall to find it. The entrance was tucked away in a bleak alley-like passage, though marked by flags.

Word is that redevelopment of the site is in the works. The plan will retain the movie theater and Von Maur, but the rest of the site will be given over to residential properties and (possibly) a hotel, along with some green space. That too isn’t a surprise.

Frog in the Snow & Other February Sights

Posted on February 10, 2022 by admin

Here we are, partway through paradoxical February, which is the shortest and yet the longest month.

Much of the snow has melted, but it will be back. Out in the front yard, near the front door, our metal frog peeps further out of the snow cover.

Elsewhere in the northwest suburbs, machines stand ready to deal with more frozen precipitation.

I’ve seen flags to warn, or assure, passersby about the solidity of ice, usually green or red for go or no go. But I’ve never seen one that hedges its bets. Red = no ice use. Yellow = own risk.

It’s theoretical for me anyway. I’m not about to walk out on any ice.

February Stroll

Posted on February 7, 2022 by admin

Sunday afternoon temps were just a little below freezing, so the snow cover didn’t melt. There wasn’t much ice underfoot either. We went to the partly trod trail behind the Robert O. Atcher Municipal Center.

Dog included.

The path runs through an open field to a small patch of wooded land.

The path also meanders through the Chicago Athenaeum International Sculpture Park, which Google Maps simply calls The Sculpture Park.

The park’s most recent bit of work, Thiruvalluvar, has been adorned recently.

Not a bad day for a walk, but the conditions that made it so lasted only a few hours. The Romans had a right idea about February: make it the shortest month.

Modern Antiques

Posted on February 2, 2022 by admin

The other part of Ann’s birthday present from her parents consisted of purchases at an antique mall in Arlington Heights, Illinois, on Saturday afternoon. It had been a while since we’d been there — the last time might have been when I spotted Billy Beer for sale — but we figured she might find some beads or bead-adjacent materials there. She did.

“On the whole it’s a likable place stuffed to the gills with debris from across the decades. I like looking around, just to remind myself how much stuff there is in the manmade world,” I wrote five years ago. Still apt. I also mentioned that place used to discourage photography.

If that’s still the case, I didn’t see any signs to tell me so this time. Maybe the proprietors gave that rule up as hopeless, since every single person who wanders in will have a high-quality, very easy to use camera in pocket or purse. Besides, how is the place going to be on social media if it disallows pictures?

So I took a few pictures. Such as of the plentiful reading material, including good old Mad, font of juvenile wisdom as surely as Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang before it.

Other objects. Many other objects.

Husman’s of Cincinnati is no more — as of only last year.

I didn’t take any kind of rigorous inventory, naturally, but I can’t shake the feeling that the mall’s stock is on a bell curve in terms of item-age, with the bulge being from the 1950s through the 1970s, and tapering off at each end. That is to say, nostalgia for people just about my age.

With some older items in the mix, of course.

Along with objects that look fairly new.

The games entertained me most of all, without me having to play them.

Some standards: Operation, Scrabble, Twister, Yahtzee. Some tie-ins: Family Feud, Green Eggs and Ham, Cat in the Hat, Jeopardy. Others: Pass Out, Rummikub, Super Master Mind.

When I looked at that image today I also noticed the Talking, Feeling, And Doing Game, which I’d never heard of. “A psychotherapeutic game for children,” the box says. Copyright date 1973 by an outfit called Creative Therapeutics in New Jersey, and one groovy typeface for the name.

A relic of the much-maligned ’70s, I figured, a rep only slightly deserved, though that’s a discussion for another time. In any case, an echo of that half century ago, now forgotten, right?

Wrong, at least according to Amazon, which asserts that the game is “one of the most popular tools used in child psychotherapy.”

Turns out there’s an entire subspecies of board games that are used in child therapy, as I discovered looking at the Amazon page: Better Me, Emotional Roller Coaster, The Mindfulness Game and Together Point Family, to name just a few. I’m a little glad that I’d never heard of any of them before.

Of all the antique mall games, however, this one amused me most.

Could it be that the real prize among board game collectors, and there must be such, is finding a mint copy of the Fish board game, only a few hundred of which were ever sold?

Almost as good.

My family were clearly stick-in-the-muds when it came to tie-in board games. I don’t remember that we had a single one in our collection of a dozen or so games, and no one (including me) ever expressed any interest in them. I don’t even remember my friends having any. Did I miss out on a delightful childhood experience? Nah.

Bead World

Posted on January 31, 2022 by admin

I’m a little less ignorant these days about beads, but only a little. For instance, I found out over the weekend that you can buy such varieties as gemstone beads, Indonesian glass beads and trade beads.

That’s because we took Ann to Bead World in Palatine, Illinois, a suburban shop that has all manor of beads, with sidelines in piercings (there is a separate room for that) and watch repair.

“It’s overwhelming,” she said when we went in. Certainly quite a stock.

We bought her some beads and charms as part of her birthday present.

But no cowboy art, which was on display in the back.

I’d never connected Indonesia with beads. “Indonesia has a centuries long history of glass bead making,” the Bead World web site says. “We carry many contemporary designs of ‘manik‘ as well as many beads in the traditional colors and patterns of the Indo-Pacific Trade.”

Indeed, among Indonesian beads, you can get rondelle-shaped beads, flat ovals, square, cubes, “Java trade beads,” melon shaped, triangle shaped, tubes, barrels, recycled glass beads and more. Who knew?

I’m never going to take up beads as a hobby myself, and I’m certainly not going to open a bead store. But if I ever did, I’d call it the Venerable Bead. Wait, someone’s already done that.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There