A sad thing was happening in Savannah when we were there. The Habersham house, one of the loveliest old mansions of the city, was being torn down to make room for a municipal auditorium.
The first Habersham in America was a Royal Governor of Georgia. He had three sons one of whom, Joseph, had, by the outbreak of the Revolution, become a good enough American to join a band of young patriots who took prisoner the British governor, Sir James Wright. The governor's house was situated where the Telfair Academy now is. He was placed under parole, but nevertheless fled to Bonaventure, the Tabnall estate, not far from the city, where he was protected by friends until he could escape to the British fleet, which then lay off Tybee Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, some eighteen miles below the city. This same Joseph Habersham, it is said, led a party which went out in 1775 in skiffs—called bateaux along this part of the coast—boarded the British ship Hinchenbroke, lying at anchor in the river, and captured her in a hand-to-hand conflict. Mr. Neyle Colquitt of Savannah, a descendant of the Habershams, tells me that the powder taken from the Hinchenbroke was used at the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the war, in which Joseph Habersham commanded a regiment of regulars, he was made Postmaster General of the United States. The old house itself was built by Archibald Bulloch, a progenitor of that Miss "Mittie" Bulloch who later became Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., mother of the President. It was designed by an English architect named Jay, who did a number of the fine old houses of Savannah, which are almost without exception of the Georgian period. Archibald Bulloch bought the lot on which he built the house from Matthew McAllister, great-grandfather of Ward McAllister. When sold by Bulloch it passed through several hands and finally came into the possession of Robert Habersham, a son of Joseph.
The old house was spacious and its interiors had a fine formality about them. The staircase, fireplace and chandeliers were handsome, and there was at the rear a charming oval room, the heavy mahogany doors of which were curved to conform to the shape of the walls. To tear down such a house was sacrilege—also it was a sacrilege hard to commit, for some of the basement walls were fifteen feet thick, and of solid brick straight through.
Sherman's headquarters were on the Square, just south of the De Soto Hotel, in the battlemented brick mansion which is the residence of General Peter W. Meldrim, ex-president of the American Bar Association, and former Mayor of Savannah.
Among other old houses characteristic of Savannah, are the Scarborough house, the Mackay house, the Thomas house in Franklin Square (also known as the Owens house), in which Lafayette was entertained, and the Telfair house, now the Telfair Academy. The Telfair and Thomas houses were built by the architect who built the Habersham house, and it is to be hoped that they will never go the way of the latter mansion.
The Thomas House in Franklin Square in which Lafayette was entertained
In 1810, about the time these houses were built, Savannah had 5,000 inhabitants; by 1850 the population had trebled, and 1890 found it a place of more than 40,000. Since then the city has grown with wholesome rapidity, and attractive suburban districts have been developed. The 1910 census gives the population as 65,000, but the city talks exuberantly of 90,000. Well, perhaps that is not an exaggerated claim. Certainly it is a city to attract those who are free to live where they please. In fall, winter and spring it leaves little to be desired. I have been there three times, and I have never walked up Bull Street without looking forward to the day when I could go there, rent an old house full of beautiful mahogany, and pass a winter. Not even New Orleans made me feel like that. I feel about New Orleans that it is a place to visit rather than to settle down in. I want to go back to New Orleans, but I do not want to stay more than a few weeks. I want to see some people that I know, prowl about the French quarter, and have Jules Alciatore turn me out a dinner; then I want to go away. So, too, I want to go back to Atlanta—just to see some people. I want to stay there a week or two. Also I want to go to St. Augustine when cold weather comes, and bask in the warm sun, and breathe the soft air full of gold dust, and feel indolent and happy as I watch the activities about the excellent Ponce de Leon Hotel; but there are two cities in the South that I dream of going to for a quiet happy winter of domesticity and work, in a rented house—it must be the right house, too—and those cities are, first Charleston; then Savannah.
The Telfair Academy in the old Telfair mansion was left, by a member of the family, to the city, to be used as a museum. Being somewhat skeptical about museums in cities of the size of Savannah, not to say much larger cities, especially when they are art museums, I very nearly omitted a visit to this one. Had I done so I would have missed seeing not only a number of exceedingly interesting historic treasures, but what I believe to be the best public art collection contained in any southern city.