Savannah: River Heritage, Gullah Culture and Gilded Age Islands
Stroll Factor Walk above the wharves, visit the Telfair Museums, experience the Savannah Music Festival, learn Gullah Geechee Sea Island heritage, admire Savannah Grey brick architecture, and discover how America wealthiest families shaped Jekyll Island.
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Savannah River and the Cotton Row
The Savannah River forms the Georgia-South Carolina border and defined the city commercial geography from its founding. Factor Row, later called Factor Walk, was the elevated streetscape along Bay Street where cotton merchants conducted business overlooking the bluff and wharves below. The iron bridges connecting the upper street to the wharves remain and now carry pedestrians between the Riverwalk and Bay Street shops. The river is dredged to 47 feet to accommodate Post-Panamax container vessels serving the Georgia Ports Authority terminals. The Riverwalk itself stretches for nine blocks of restaurants, galleries, and candy shops, including River Street Sweets which has operated since 1973 and is known for pralines made on marble slabs in the shop windows.
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Telfair Museums and Savannah Art Collections
The Telfair Museums comprise three sites: Telfair Academy, the Owens-Thomas House, and the Jepson Center for the Arts. The Telfair Academy, built in 1818 as the home of the Telfair family and converted to a museum in 1886, is the oldest public art museum in the American South. The Owens-Thomas House, designed by English architect William Jay and completed in 1819, is considered one of the finest examples of Regency architecture in the United States and retains a rare intact urban slave quarters. The Jepson Center, designed by Moshe Safdie and opened in 2006, provides 64,000 square feet of contemporary gallery space. Together the three sites hold over 17,000 objects spanning ancient to contemporary art.
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Savannah Music Festival
The Savannah Music Festival, held across 16 days each March and April, presents roughly 80 performances spanning jazz, classical, roots music, and world music in venues across the city including the Savannah Civic Center, Trinity United Methodist Church, and Trustees Theater. The festival was founded in 1989 as the Savannah Onstage International Arts Festival. Music director Rob Gibson reshaped it into a nationally recognized event drawing artists including Wynton Marsalis, Emmylou Harris, and the Vienna Philharmonic. Attendance has grown to over 90,000 across the festival run. The organization operates year-round educational programs in Savannah public schools reaching thousands of students who would otherwise have limited access to live classical and jazz performance.
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Gullah Geechee Heritage on the Sea Islands
The Gullah Geechee people descend from enslaved West and Central Africans brought to the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina beginning in the 17th century. Their relative isolation on the islands allowed the preservation of African languages, spiritual practices, crafts, and food traditions that were largely lost in mainland plantation communities. The Gullah language, a creole with English structure and heavy West African vocabulary and phonology, is still spoken by some elders on Sapelo Island south of Savannah. Sapelo Island Hog Hammock community, with about 50 residents, is one of the last Gullah Geechee communities with continuous occupation. The Harriet Tubman Museum in Macon and the Penn Center on Saint Helena Island are key cultural preservation institutions for the heritage.
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Savannah Grey Brick and Antebellum Architecture
Savannah Grey brick, made from the distinctive clay found in the bluffs along the Savannah River, has a pale grey color unique to Savannah construction. The brick was produced from roughly 1810 to 1880 and used in dozens of Savannah buildings now protected by the Historic Savannah Foundation. The foundation, established in 1955 after the demolition of the City Market, pioneered urban preservation practices that became models for historic districts across the United States. More than 1,100 restored historic buildings in a two-and-a-half square mile area form the Savannah Historic District, one of the largest urban historic districts in the United States listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
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Jekyll Island Club and Georgia Sea Island History
Jekyll Island, 70 miles south of Savannah, was purchased in 1886 by a private club of American industrialists including William Rockefeller, JP Morgan, William Vanderbilt, and Joseph Pulitzer. At its peak the Jekyll Island Club members represented one-sixth of the world total wealth. The Federal Reserve Act was secretly drafted on Jekyll Island in November 1910 during a private meeting convened by Senator Nelson Aldrich. The Georgia state government purchased the island from the club in 1947 for 675,000 dollars. The remaining club cottages, including the Queen Anne-style Crane Cottage, are preserved as a historic district. Jekyll Island is now a public state park with 10 miles of beaches and bike paths alongside the historic district.