Description
Founded in 1733 as a refuge for poor and improvident people who could not “make it” in England, Georgia became the last and poorest American colony. Only a handful of 18th-century buildings has survived. But after the invention of the cotton gin on a plantation outside of Savannah in 1793, the transformation of Georgia and the South began. The port of Savannah prospered as never before. In 1817 the young, professionally trained, English-born architect William Jay began building opulent villas in the London Regency mode. Meanwhile, New England housewrights brought the refined Adam-Federal style to the capital, Milledgeville, and to middle Georgia. In the 1840’s, master carpenters, with the aid of pattern books, produced the finest Greek Revival mansions of the Old South in Athens, Washington, Macon, Roswell and Columbus.
Among the principal buildings described and illustrated are the James Vann House, Spring Place, an Indian chief’s frontier brick mansion; Thomas Spalding House, Sapelo Island, a gentleman amateur’s Palladian palace on a wilderness island; Richard Richardson House, Savannah, the first and greatest of William Jay’s famous Regency villas (a whole chapter is devoted to Jay in Georgia); the Governor’s Mansion at Milledgeville, a Greek Revival masterwork by Irish-born Charles B. Cluskey; and Charles Green Mansion, Savannah, the greatest Gothic house south of Virginia, designed by New Yorker John Norris for an English-born cotton merchant.
Many pages are devoted to memorable Savannah, with its 18th-century town plan, inspired by Renaissance military textbooks but expanded for 125 years as an unparalleled example of public planning, and its many treelined, brick-paved streets and stately row houses.
Architecture of the Old South: Georgia, Georgia, architecture, architects, southern, plantations, Old South, antebellum, The South, America, England, English, American history, Southern history, American architecture, Southern architecture, Georgia history, Georgia architecture, historic buildings, photographs, drawings, floor plans, elevations, maps, travel, travel guide, Mills Lane, Van Jones Martin, Gene Carpenter, Georgian, Colonial, Frontier, Federal, Adam, Robert Adam, Adamesque, Adam-Federal, Regency, English Regency, Greek Revival, Romantic, Gothic, Gothic Revival, Italian Villa, Italianate, Renaissance Revival, castles, villas, octagons, Savannah, General Oglethorpe, James Oglethorpe, General James Oglethorpe, Milledgeville, Athens, Washington, Macon, Roswell, Columbus, Richard Richardson House, Owens-Thomas House , Isaiah Davenport House, Charles Green House, Green-Meldrim House, Ware’s Folly, Augusta, Great Hall House, MESDA, South End House, Sapelo Island, Thomas Spalding, tabby, Godfrey Barnsley, William B. Johnston House, Adrien Boucher, William Jay, Charles Cluskey, John Norris, Bethesda, George Whitefield, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, James Habersham, James Habersham Jr. House, The Pink House, William Bartram, Fermin Cerveau, Georgia Historical Society, James Gibbs, Palladian, Palladio, Robert Mills, Nicholas Ware House, Robert Morris, William Halfpenny, John Gordon House, Daniel Pratt, William Scarbrough, William Scarbrough House, Alexander Telfair House, Telfair Museum, Asher Benjamin, John Haviland, Aaron Champion House, Tower of the Winds, The Hermitage, Henry McAlpin, Francis Sorrel House, Sorrel-Weed House, Andrew Low House, Barrington Hall, Minard Lafever, Batty Langley, John Henry Hopkins, Richard Upjohn,Terminus, Atlanta, A.J. Davis, Alexander Jackson Davis, A.J. Downing, Andrew Jackson Downing, Hugh Mercer House, General Hugh Mercer, William Ranlett, Orson Squire Fowler, Cadwallader Raines House, James Vann House, Spring Place, Governor’s Mansion at Milledgeville
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