Savannah Historic District

The Savannah Historic District is one of America's largest and most beautiful historic districts — the graceful heart of the oldest city in Georgia. Laid out in 1733 around a grid of leafy public squares, it preserves a pioneering vision of city planning along with antebellum mansions, cobblestone streets, and live oaks draped in Spanish moss. Spared from destruction in the Civil War and rescued again from demolition in the 20th century, Savannah's historic core is a rare, intact window into the American South's colonial and antebellum past.

Savannah was founded in 1733 by General James Oglethorpe, who landed on a bluff above the Savannah River to establish Georgia, the last of the thirteen original British colonies. Oglethorpe laid out the town on an innovative grid organized around open public squares — a design known as the Oglethorpe Plan that allowed the city to grow ward by ward while preserving green common spaces at its heart.

Over the following century Savannah grew into one of the South's most important ports, shipping cotton to the world and building the elegant mansions, churches, and townhouses that still line its squares. The city was captured near the end of the Civil War when General William T. Sherman completed his March to the Sea in December 1864; rather than burn Savannah, he presented it to President Lincoln as a 'Christmas gift,' and the city was largely spared.

By the mid-20th century, decades of decline threatened the historic core, and several landmark buildings and squares were lost or nearly demolished. A grassroots preservation movement, led by the Historic Savannah Foundation founded in 1955, fought to save the district. Their efforts preserved 22 of the original squares and hundreds of historic buildings, and in 1966 the Savannah Historic District was designated a National Historic Landmark, one of the largest in the country.