The City That Sherman Didn’t Burn

Here’s a piece of Civil War history that surprises most people.

When General William Tecumseh Sherman marched his Union army through Georgia in 1864, he burned everything in his path. Atlanta went up in flames. The countryside turned to ash. But when Sherman reached Savannah, he stopped. He looked at the beautiful squares, the moss-draped oaks, the elegant brick homes, and he couldn’t do it. He sent a telegram to President Lincoln instead. “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.”

Savannah survived. The antebellum architecture survived. The live oaks that were planted in 1790 survived. The grid of twenty two squares, designed by the city’s founder James Oglethorpe, survived. Walk through Savannah today, and you’re walking through a city that time forgot to destroy.

That’s not an accident. Savannah has always been different from the rest of Georgia. More European. More tolerant. More focused on beauty than on industry. The city was founded on the idea of religious freedom. Catholics and Jews and Protestants all worshiped here openly while other colonies persecuted them. That spirit never left.

Today, Savannah is one of the most beautiful cities in America. The entire Historic District is a National Historic Landmark. The largest in the country. You could spend a week here, walking the squares, peeking into courtyards, eating shrimp and grits at a hundred year old counter, and never run out of things to see.

The Squares – Twenty Two Perfect Blocks

James Oglethorpe designed Savannah around squares. Small parks, each one unique, each one surrounded by streets and homes and churches. The squares were meant to be gathering places. Places for neighbors to meet. Places for markets. Places for militias to drill. Places for hanging criminals, if we’re being honest about the 18th century.

Today, the squares are peaceful. Benches in the shade. Fountains bubbling. Statues of forgotten heroes. Live oaks draped in Spanish moss, their branches meeting overhead to form green tunnels.

Chippewa Square is the most famous. That’s where Forrest Gump sat on a bench and told his story to strangers. The bench is gone now. It’s in the Savannah History Museum. But the square still looks the same. The same oaks. The same church across the street. The same feeling that time has stopped.

Johnson Square is the largest. The first square Oglethorpe built. A monument to Nathanael Greene, a Revolutionary War hero who died here. The square is busy at lunchtime. Office workers eat sandwiches on the benches. Tourists take photos of the fountain. Pigeons wait for crumbs.

Forsyth Park is not technically a square. It’s a thirty acre park at the north end of the Historic District. The fountain is the most photographed thing in Savannah. Cast iron. White. Tiered. Built in 1858. It looks like something from a French fairy tale. Weddings happen here almost every weekend. Couples pose in front of the fountain while their guests throw rice.

Monterey Square is the most beautiful. A statue of Casimir Pulaski, the Polish nobleman who died fighting for America. The Mercer-Williams House overlooks the square. That’s the house from “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” The book, then the movie. Jim Williams shot his lover here in 1981. He was tried four times. Finally acquitted. The house is still there. You can tour it. The guides tell the story without judgment. Mostly.

The best way to see the squares is to walk. Start at Forsyth Park. Walk north through the center of the district. You’ll pass eight squares in an hour. Stop at each one. Sit on a bench. Watch the city move around you. This is not a race. Savannah rewards slowness.

The Architecture – A City of Beautiful Homes

Savannah has the largest collection of historic homes in the South. Hundreds of buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries. Federal, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Romanesque, Victorian. Every style that was popular between 1750 and 1900 is represented here.

The homes are made of brick and stucco. Ironwork balconies on the upper floors. Wrought iron fences with spear tips. Doors painted in colors that would be illegal anywhere else. Teal. Coral. Butter yellow. Lavender. The colors are part of Savannah’s charm. You can paint your house any color you want, as long as the Historic Review Board approves. They approve almost everything.

The Owens-Thomas House is the best preserved. Built in 1819. Designed by the same architect who designed the US Capitol. The house has a carriage house, a garden, and one of the oldest surviving urban slave quarters in America. The tour covers everything. The beauty and the horror. Don’t skip it. Don’t pretend the slave quarters aren’t part of the story.

The Davenport House is where the preservation movement started. In 1955, the house was scheduled for demolition. A group of women raised money to save it. They saved the house. Then they saved the whole district. The Davenport House is a museum now. The tour guides wear period clothing. They speak in character. It’s a little cheesy. It’s also effective. You’ll leave understanding why Savannah is worth saving.

The Mercer-Williams House is the famous one. Jim Williams bought it in 1969 for $55,000. He restored it beautifully. Then he killed someone in it. The house is still beautiful. The story is still strange. The tour is worth taking if you read the book or saw the movie. If you haven’t, read the book first.

River Street – Cobblestones and Candy

River Street runs along the Savannah River. Old cotton warehouses, now converted into shops and restaurants and bars. The street is paved with cobblestones that were once ballast on ships. Rocks carried from England and France and Africa, dumped here to make room for cotton, then used to pave the road.

The cobblestones are slippery when wet. Uneven when dry. Wear sturdy shoes. Don’t try to walk in heels. You’ll break an ankle and ruin your vacation.

The shops on River Street sell everything you’d expect. T-shirts. Fudge. Candles. Souvenir spoons. Christmas ornaments. Pirate memorabilia. The fudge shops let you sample before you buy. Sample everything. Buy the praline pecan. It’s the best.

The Waving Girl statue is at the west end of River Street. Florence Martus waved at every ship that entered the port for forty four years. She lived in a small cottage with her brother. She waved a handkerchief by day and a lantern by night. Sailors looked for her. They wrote her letters. They brought her gifts. She never missed a ship. When she died in 1943, the entire port shut down for her funeral.

The Rousakis Riverfront Plaza is the main walkway. Two miles of brick path along the water. Cargo ships pass by. Tugboats push barges. The Savannah River is still a working river. The ships are huge. They seem too large for the channel. Yet they fit. Somehow.

The Food – Low Country Cooking at Its Best

Savannah is not a fancy food city. It’s a real food city. The kind where the best restaurant is a hole in the wall that’s been there since 1922.

Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room is the most famous. Family style. Sit at a long table with strangers. Pass the fried chicken, the black-eyed peas, the okra, the biscuits, the sweet potato soufflé, the banana pudding. No menu. Just whatever Mrs. Wilkes’ family decided to cook that day. Lunch only. The line starts forming at 10 AM. By 11, it’s around the block. Worth the wait.

The Olde Pink House is for special occasions. An 18th century mansion painted pink. The dining rooms are small and dark and romantic. The fried green tomatoes are famous. The She Crab soup is better. The scallops are perfect. The prices are high. The service is excellent. Go for an anniversary or a birthday.

Zunzi’s is for lunch. A South African fusion sandwich shop in a tiny building on York Street. The Conquistador sandwich has chicken, sausage, sauce, and enough calories for a week. Eat it outside. Share it with a friend. You won’t finish it alone.

Leopold’s Ice Cream is for dessert. The pharmacy has been here since 1919. The soda fountain still looks original. The ice cream is made in small batches. The Tutti Frutti is the signature flavor. Rum raisin is better. The line is long. Move quickly.

The Pirates’ House is for tourists. The food is fine. The building is interesting. It was a tavern for sailors in the 18th century. Robert Louis Stevenson based part of Treasure Island on stories he heard here. The building is also supposedly haunted. The servers have ghost stories. Ask them. They love telling them.

The Cemeteries – Beautiful and Sad

Colonial Park Cemetery is in the middle of the Historic District. The oldest graves are from 1750. The newest are from 1853. The cemetery closed to burials after a yellow fever epidemic. Too many bodies. Not enough space.

The cemetery is peaceful now. Benches in the shade. Oak trees with moss. A brick wall along the sidewalk. Tourists walk through slowly, reading the stones, trying to imagine the lives of people who died before the Civil War.

The grave markers tell stories. “Sacred to the memory of” is common. “Beloved mother” is common. “Died of yellow fever” is also common. The epidemics of the 19th century killed thousands. Whole families in a single week. The stones are small. The grief was large.

Bonaventure Cemetery is outside the Historic District. A few miles east. The cemetery is huge. One hundred acres. Live oaks draped in moss. Graves dating back to 1846. The Bird Girl statue was here until it moved to a museum. The statue on the cover of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” is gone. The cemetery is still worth visiting.

The best time to visit Bonaventure is early morning. The light filters through the trees. The fog rises from the river. The only sounds are birds and your own footsteps. Walk the main road to the river. Turn left. Find the grave of Johnny Mercer, the songwriter who gave us “Moon River” and “Accentuate the Positive.” The grave is simple. The view is not.

The Ghosts – Savannah’s Favorite Export

Savannah is the most haunted city in America. Or so the tour companies claim. They claim a lot of things.

The ghost tours are everywhere. Walking tours. Trolley tours. Pub tours. Hearse tours. Yes, hearse tours. You ride in a converted hearse while a guide tells you about murders and suicides and apparitions in windows.

The stories are entertaining. They’re also mostly made up. The tour guides know this. You should know this. Go anyway. The tours are fun. The guides are funny. The streets at night are beautiful. The hearse is ridiculous.

The real ghosts of Savannah are the memories. The people who lived here. The slaves who built the city. The soldiers who died in wars. The families who lost children to yellow fever. Those ghosts are real. They don’t appear in photos. They don’t rattle chains. They just exist, in the bricks and the cobblestones and the moss-draped oaks.

The Honest Bottom Line

Savannah is slow. That’s the first thing you notice. The people speak slowly. They walk slowly. They eat slowly. The whole city moves at a pace that feels wrong if you’re from New York or Chicago or LA.

But that’s the point. Savannah is not for rushing. It’s for sitting. For walking. For eating. For drinking sweet tea on a porch while the sun sets behind the moss.

The city is not perfect. The poverty is real. The heat in summer is brutal. The mosquitoes are relentless. The ghost tours are silly. The fudge shops are overpriced.

But the squares are perfect. The oaks are perfect. The architecture is perfect. The food is perfect. The feeling of sitting on a bench in Chippewa Square, with the green shade and the fountain and the church bells, is as close to perfect as any city in America gets.

Go to Savannah. Stay in a bed and breakfast. Walk the squares. Eat at Mrs. Wilkes’. Drink a beer on River Street. Visit Bonaventure at sunrise.

And when you leave, you’ll already be planning to come back. That’s what Savannah does. It keeps a piece of you. And you carry a piece of it with you forever.