The Andrew Low House was the Savannah, Georgia, marriage home of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, and was visited by the likes of William Makepeace Thackeray and Robert Lee. Built on a trust lot facing Lafayette Square, the house is now owned by The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of Georgia and is open as a house museum. Tania June Sammons takes readers through the house room by room, relating the history of the Low family and the enslaved people who served them. The house preserves one of the finest collections of period furnishings relating to the history of Savannah, including furniture, silver, porcelain, and paintings by some of America’s most prestigious furniture makers, including Duncan Phyfe and Joseph Barry. The parterre garden, one of the three remaining original nineteenth-century garden plans in the city, has been restored to its period condition. In this richly illustrated book, Sammons leads visitors through the house to see the following: First Floor: Front Formal Parlor, Informal Parlor, Dining Room, Low Library. Second Floor: Robert E. Lee Bedroom, Children’s Bedroom, William Makepeace Thackeray Bedroom, Bathing Room, Low Bedroom, Stiles Bedroom.
This biography spans two centuries of the intertwined families of the House of Low and the extended families of the Clays, Stiles, and Mackays. Beginning with the migration of Andrew Low, Sr., to Savannah, Georgia, in 1800, the family is involved in murder and mayhem in the burning of the French privateers during the War of 1812.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic of true crime, set in a most beguiling Southern city—now in a 30th anniversary edition with a new afterword by the author “Elegant and wicked . . . might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime.”—The New York Times Book Review Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. In this sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative, John Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman’s Card Club; the turbulent young gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the “soul of pampered self-absorption”; the uproariously funny drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young people dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience.
Born at the start of the Civil War, Juliette "Daisy" Gordon Low struggled to reconcile being a good Southern belle with being true to her adventurous spirit. Accidentally deafened, she married a dashing British patrician and moved to England, where she quickly became dissatisfied with the aimlessness of privileged life. Her search for greater purpose ended when she met Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, and was inspired to recreate his program for girls. The Girl Scouts of the USA—which can now count more than fifty-nine million American girls and women among its past members—aims to instill useful skills and moral values in its young members, with an emphasis on fun. In this lively and accessible biography of its intrepid founder, Stacy A. Cordery paints a dynamic portrait of an intriguing woman and a true pioneer whose work touched the lives of millions of girls and women around the world.
Seeking Eden promotes an awareness of, and appreciation for, Georgia’s rich garden heritage. Updated and expanded here are the stories of nearly thirty designed landscapes first identified in the early twentieth-century publication Garden History of Georgia, 1733–1933. Seeking Eden records each garden’s evolution and history as well as each garden’s current early twenty-first-century appearance, as beautifully documented in photographs. Dating from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, these publicly and privately owned gardens include nineteenth-century parterres, Colonial Revival gardens, Country Place–era landscapes, rock gardens, historic town squares, college campuses, and an urban conservation garden. Seeking Eden explores the significant impact of the women who envisioned and nurtured many of these special places; the role of professional designers, including J. Neel Reid, Philip Trammel Shutze, William C. Pauley, Robert B. Cridland, the Olmsted Brothers, Hubert Bond Owens, and Clermont Lee; and the influence of the garden club movement in Georgia in the early twentieth century. FEATURED GARDENS: Andrew Low House and Garden | Savannah Ashland Farm | Flintstone Barnsley Gardens | Adairsville Barrington Hall and Bulloch Hall | Roswell Battersby-Hartridge Garden | Savannah Beech Haven | Athens Berry College: Oak Hill and House o’ Dreams | Mount Berry Bradley Olmsted Garden | Columbus Cator Woolford Gardens | Atlanta Coffin-Reynolds Mansion | Sapelo Island Dunaway Gardens | Newnan vicinity Governor’s Mansion | Atlanta Hills and Dales Estate | LaGrange Lullwater Conservation Garden | Atlanta Millpond Plantation | Thomasville vicinity Oakton | Marietta Rock City Gardens | Lookout Mountain Salubrity Hall | Augusta Savannah Squares | Savannah Stephenson-Adams-Land Garden | Atlanta Swan House | Atlanta University of Georgia: North Campus, the President’s House and Garden, and the Founders Memorial Garden | Athens Valley View | Cartersville vicinity Wormsloe and Wormsloe State Historic Site | Savannah vicinity Zahner-Slick Garden | Atlanta
Exploring America's material culture, Common Places reveals the history, culture, and social and class relationships that are the backdrop of the everyday structures and environments of ordinary people. Examining America's houses and cityscapes, its rural outbuildings and landscapes from perspectives including cultural geography, decorative arts, architectural history, and folklore, these articles reflect the variety and vibrancy of the growing field of vernacular architecture. In essays that focus on buildings and spaces unique to the U.S. landscape, Clay Lancaster, Edward T. Price, John Michael Vlach, and Warren E. Roberts reconstruct the social and cultural contexts of the modern bungalow, the small-town courthouse square, the shotgun house of the South, and the log buildings of the Midwest. Surveying the buildings of America's settlement, scholars including Henry Glassie, Norman Morrison Isham, Edward A. Chappell, and Theodore H. M. Prudon trace European ethnic influences in the folk structures of Delaware and the houses of Rhode Island, in Virginia's Renish homes, and in the Dutch barn widely repeated in rural America. Ethnic, regional, and class differences have flavored the nation's vernacular architecture. Fraser D. Neiman reveals overt changes in houses and outbuildings indicative of the growing social separation and increasingly rigid relations between seventeenth-century Virginia planters and their servants. Fred B. Kniffen and Fred W. Peterson show how, following the westward expansion of the nineteenth century, the structures of the eastern elite were repeated and often rejected by frontier builders. Moving into the twentieth century, James Borchert tracks the transformation of the alley from an urban home for Washington's blacks in the first half of the century to its new status in the gentrified neighborhoods of the last decade, while Barbara Rubin's discussion of the evolution of the commercial strip counterpoints the goals of city planners and more spontaneous forms of urban expression. The illustrations that accompany each article present the artifacts of America's material past. Photographs of individual buildings, historic maps of the nation's agricultural expanse, and descriptions of the household furnishings of the Victorian middle class, the urban immigrant population, and the rural farmer's homestead complete the volume, rooting vernacular architecture to the American people, their lives, and their everyday creations.
This book chronicles the creation of Everglades National Park, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. This effort, which spanned 1928 to 1958, was of central importance to the later emergence of modern environmentalism. Prior to the park’s creation, the Everglades was seen as a reviled and useless swamp, unfit for typical recreational or development projects. The region’s unusual makeup also made it an unlikely candidate to become a national park, as it had none of the sweeping scenic vistas or geological monuments found in other nationally protected areas. Park advocates drew on new ideas concerning the value of biota and ecology, the importance of wilderness, and the need to protect habitats, marine ecosystems, and plant life to redefine the Everglades. Using these ideas, the Everglades began to be recognized as an ecologically valuable and fragile wetland—and thus a region in need of protective status. While these new ideas foreshadowed the later emergence of modern environmentalism, tourism and the economic desires of Florida’s business and political elites also impacted the park’s future. These groups saw the Everglades’ unique biology and ecology as a foundation on which to build a tourism empire. They connected the Everglades to Florida’s modernization and commercialization, hoping the park would help facilitate the state’s transformation into the Sunshine State. Political conservatives welcomed federal power into Florida so long as it brought economic growth. Yet, even after the park’s creation, conservative landowners successfully fought to limit the park and saw it as a threat to their own economic freedoms. Today, a series of levees on the park’s eastern border marks the line between urban and protected areas, but development into these areas threatens the park system. Rising sea levels caused by global warming are another threat to the future of the park. The battle to save the swamp’s biodiversity continues, and Everglades Park stands at the center of ongoing restoration efforts.
You may think you know the South for its food, its people, its past, and its stories, but if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that the region tells far more than one tale. It is ever-evolving, open to interpretation, steeped in history and tradition, yet defined differently based on who you ask. This Is My South inspires the reader to explore the Southern States––Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia––like never before. No other guide pulls together these states into one book in quite this way with a fresh perspective on can’t-miss landmarks, off the beaten path gems, tours for every interest, unique places to sleep, and classic restaurants. So come see for yourself and create your own experiences along the way!
From the Greek Revival grandeur of Belle Helene, to the Moorish fantasy of Longwood, to the simplicity of Rosella, the plantation homes of Louisiana and the Natchez area powerfully recall the brief flowering of the unique civilization of the Old South. In their noble façades, sculptured interiors, and scattered outbuildings can be seen the feudal splandor of the great cotton and sugar planters, and the doomed glory of the Confederate war effort. In these 120 resonant full-color photographs, David King Gleason fully captures the aura of Louisiana's plantation homes -- some beautiful in the morning light, some shaded by trees and hanging moss, some crumbling in decay and neglect. Taking each house on its own terms, Gleason's photographs present the buildings and their environs sharply and without deception. Accompanying the photographs are captions that give a brief architectural evaluation of each house and provide notes on its construction, history, and present condition. Gleason has organized his book as a journey along the waterways that were the lifeline of Louisiana's plantations, their link to New Orleans and to the markets and factories of the North. Beginning in the vicinity of New Orleans and the lower Mississippi, Gleason presents such houses as Evergreen, with its columns and twin circular staircases; the exuberant San Francisco; and Oak Alley, set at the end of a spectacular avenue of 28 oak trees. Continuing along the bayous that lead into the western part of the state, he shows us the palatial Madewoood, constructed from seasoned timbers and 60,000 slave-made bricks; the meticulously restored Shadows-on-the-Teche; the ramshackle Darby House; and Bubenzer, which served as a Union army headquarters during the Civil War.From Cane River country and north Louisiana, the photographs portray Magnolia, burned by Union troops and then rebuilt to its original specifications; Melrose, built in the early 1830s by a freed slave; and Oakland, the location for the Civil War movie The Horse Soldiers. Moving overland towards Natchez; the elaborate, octagonal Longwood; Rosemont, the boyhood home of Jefferson Davis; Oakley, where John James Audubon was once engaged as a tutor; and Rosedown, with its elaborate gardens.Continuing south of Baton Rouge along the River Road, Gleason closes his tour with homes including Mount Hope, built in the eighteenth century; Nottoway, the largest plantation home in the South, completed on the eve of the Civil War; Indian Camp, a leprosarium for most of its existence; and the pillared galleries of Belle Helene. The plantation homes of Louisiana were highly personal expressions of pride and faith in the future. Yet the building of these spectacular monuments was a brief phenomenon. In the wake of the Civil War, the South's economy was devoted to survival, not luxury. A tribute to the plantation home, David King Gleason's photographs reveal the beauty, grandeur, and poignance of these monuments.
The Telfair Museum of Art’s Owens-Thomas House in Savannah, Georgia, is considered one of the finest examples of Regency architecture in the United States. Named a National Historic Landmark in 1976 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, the Owens-Thomas House was designed by British architect William Jay and was built from 1816 to 1819. In addition to its architectural significance, the house features fine furnishings and decorative arts from the early nineteenth century. The house’s rare two-story urban slave quarters alone make it a must-see stop on any tour of historic downtown Savannah. The Owens-Thomas House boasts a storied past with political triumphs and personal tragedies, offering visitors unique insight into a young American world as it evolved in the early nineteenth century.
