Teaching classes at the Savannah College of Art and Design kept me busy this fall, but I am now settling in for marathon winter writing. Before we delve back into the discussion about the other Mills Lane family construction projects,…
Mills Lane IV had colorful characters on both sides of his family. These stories take us into his mother’s side, and since it is the week of the Fourth of July, it seems appropriate to use a picture of a…
Through the mid and late 1970s, Mills B. Lane, Jr. and his wife, Anne, continued their renovations down Habersham Street around Whitefield Square and on Price and Gaston streets. When young real estate agent Dicky Mopper saw that he had…
In The Wonderful World of Mills B. Lane, Jr., his son, Mills IV, describes how his parents got into the renovation and restoration business in Savannah while they were still living in Atlanta. “In 1961 Mills and Anne decided to…
Our final look at the Mills B. Lane family efforts in Columbia Ward unites the work of parents and son. Lumber merchant Patrick K. Shiels built the house at 417-421 East Broughton St. in 1843. It was raised and enlarged…
A cooking crane, an arm that would have held a pot, still hung in the basement fireplace of the brick Heineman House in 1991. Victorian coal grates had been added to other fireplaces. A boot scraper was in the iron…
Save the carved door stops; toss the pigeon dung. Restoring derelict houses requires detective work and housecleaning skills. After a century or so of neglect and remuddling, beautifully built houses and cottages can become unrecognizable and appear irredeemable. Mills Lane…
Columbia Ward is one of the most famous in Savannah, and the Lane family put their time and money into restorations of houses on the square and side streets. An earlier post about signs in Savannah described Mills Lane IV’s…
Mills Lane IV wholeheartedly entered the family discussions of Savannah restorations and renovations with his pied-à-terre at 14 Price Street in Washington Ward. His parents, Anne and Mills B. Lane, Jr., had purchased the half block of Price Street between…
NPR aired an All Things Considered segment last week with Robert Siegel interviewing Harvard professors Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Maria Tatar about a book they have just edited: The Annotated African American Folk Tales. In the interview they talk…
The face of Warren Ward took shape in the 1800s, but a major facelift in the 1960s brought a new energy and glow. “Warren Square has a well-worn rather woebegotten look about it,” Kathy Palmer wrote in The Savannah Evening…
Two more houses complete our walk around Warren Square. The William Parker House built 1806-1809 sits on the square’s northwest corner at 324-326 East Bryan St. It was built for Dr. William Parker, 1766-1838, who volunteered to visit houses of…
One of the ways we tell our stories is by the way we choose to name our children, our places, our monuments. One of the reasons behind this blog and the resulting book is to describe the men named Mills…
The Mills Bee Lane family was instrumental in the house ballet that moved buildings around Savannah. Those houses have played musical squares and filled in the streetscapes. The Lanes were key players in the rehabilitation of public and private buildings…
“We have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory,” said Henry Grady, managing editor of The Atlanta Constitution in the 1880s. Mills Lane IV quoted Grady…
If you are up for a lively discussion or a good argument in Savannah, civic engagement can provide the agenda. My favorite is the Historic District Board of Review. I grew to love it when Mills Lane IV served on…
“Buildings are three-dimensional history books that reflect the comings and goings, successes and failures, aspirations and follies of real people.” – Mills Lane in the foreword to Architecture of the Old South: Georgia. We come to everything with our own experiences…
Mills Lane IV completed his first edition of Savannah Revisited in 1969 while he was in the U.S. Navy.
As many college friends continued to learn more about the geography of Southeast Asia, Mills Lane IV was back from the Caribbean, thinking about historical sites near ports in the Mediterranean and the supplies his ship would need when they…
With friends in Vietnam and on Navy ships throughout the world, Mills Lane IV continued to maneuver minesweepers out of Charleston and negotiate renovations on his “plush little pad” at 14 Price St. in Savannah on weekends he could get…
“Anyone who can fathom the mysteries of celestial navigation must be a wizard.” As Mills Lane IV explored the seas and stars in the Navy, he watched and learned in awe as he discovered lives of others in the intimacy…
As Mills Lane IV is finishing Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1966, mail call continues to connect him with friends and family. His father sends him on weekend errands for the Ships of the Sea Museum…
Mills Lane IV would often send basically the same letter to several people. Sometimes Mama and Papa would receive a specialized letter replete with requests, but often family and friends would receive versions of the same script.
Mills Lane IV received some unexpected military aid in deciding his future while toiling away in the summer of 1965 at the C&S Bank in Macon, Ga.
The Lanes seemed to use letters as admissions of failure, intense self-scrutiny and promises of success, so let’s take another diversion with letters and listen to words of struggle from Mills Lane IV before we return to renovation.
So far these posts have focused mostly on what the Lane family restored and accomplished in Savannah, and there is much more of that to come. But the family chemistry is a part of that building mortar. Mills Lane IV…
Mills Lane IV was perhaps most pleased with his exterior restoration of the Unitarian Universalist Church on the northwest trust lot of Troup Square from 1999-2000. His parents had paid for the renovation of that square, and Mills took delight…
The recent news about Armstrong State University involves a possible merger with Georgia Southern University about 50 miles west down Interstate-16. In the 1960s the controversy was about whether the college should expand in downtown Savannah, and a solution moved…
Mills Lane IV had contemplated several scenarios for the land around Scarbrough House. When the replication of the original courthouse on Wright Square was coolly received, he put several friends to work as “the committee on taste” to help plan…
In the late 1990s Mills Lane IV dreamed of replicating the demolished Chatham County Courthouse that had originally been built on Wright Square. He wanted to put the new construction next to Scarbrough House and the Ships of the Sea…
Eventually Mills Lane IV decided that Scarbrough House was the place for the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum and took on the restoration project.
By the 1970s, historian and preservationist Walter Hartridge had convinced new Savannah resident Frances Bosworth to buy Scarbrough House and create a foundation for it. They discussed a maritime museum, but instead gave the property to the Historic Savannah Foundation.…
Before “Museum in the Moonlight” and art exhibits like “Gestalt,” the William Scarbrough House on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., was a scene of privilege and prejudice. Not long after the British had been burning down American buildings during…
“Come and get me. We’re going to Bonaventure and steal a fence post.” Mills Lane IV had called architect John Deering when they were working on the exterior of the Unitarian Universalist Church on Troup Square in Savannah. They didn’t…
The Historic Board of Review was a lively monthly meeting when Mills Lane IV joined the discussion. As a member of the board he questioned applicants and architects. He lectured. He cajoled and encouraged. He didn’t hide his sense of humor or outrage.
Mills Lane IV was more than a tree hugger: he started a tree fund. He was more than an admirer of Savannah’s streets: he paid for the renovation of a main artery. He was more than patron of fine house…
Today we continue our introduction to the Mills Lane family with Mills Lane IV starting on his own path through Harvard, the Navy and the back roads of the South pursuing research for his books on architecture. Fortunately for Savannah,…
Anne and Mills Lane, Jr. were passionate about making downtown Savannah a livable place in the 1960s. They put their money where their hearts were. Today’s web post introduces some of the Lane projects including their work with landscape architect…
August 28, 2016 the Savannah Morning News published a special section about the architecture of Savannah. That provides perfect timing for us to reintroduce the Mills Bee Lane family and start our new web series by Rexanna Lester that will…
