ardsley park & chatham crescent As the automobile age cranked up in the early 20th century in Savannah, the planners of Ardsley Park turned to a familiar colonial design to configure its streets and squares, the grid layout of Gen. James E. Oglethorpe, while adjoining Chatham Crescent, under development at the same time, steered toward a newer classical style that had originated in France. The two suburbs are approximately bounded by Waters Avenue on the east, Bull Street on the west, 51st and 54th streets on the south, and Victory Drive and Maupas Avenue on the north. Their development began in 1909-10, an exciting time for the city. The Port of Savannah was then the world’s largest shipper of naval stores, and the third-largest cotton exporter. Savannah also hosted the Great Savannah Races of 1908, 1910 and 1911, an early automobile competition that garnered nationwide attention. Ardsley Park and Chatham Crescent thus became Savannah’s first two automobile suburbs, although the streetcar had not yet been forgotten. Abercorn Street was to run through the center, through which the main streetcar belt – Abercorn and Barnard – would eventually be extended, thus providing “a distinct guarantee of future value,” according to a 1914 advertisement in the Savannah Morning News. Harry Hays Lattimore and William Lattimore, working through the Ardsley Park Land Corp., were chiefly responsible for the Ardsley Park side. Harvey Granger, working through the Chatham Land and Improvement Co., was the leader of the development of the Chatham Crescent portion. Those two companies bought up “swamp land beyond the edge of the city,” in the words of 1985 National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for Ardsley Park – Chatham Crescent, and began to transform it.
The first home constructed in Ardsley Park was at the corner of Washington Avenue and Abercorn Street. It was completed in 1910. From there, Ardsley Park took shape as a variant of Oglethorpe’s 1733 plan for Savannah. Its gridiron neighborhoods were broken into wards and featured several landscaped squares. But, to better control the flow of automobile traffic, the squares were offset from the main streets. Chatham Crescent was based on a much different scheme, a flamboyant French-inspired Beaux Arts plan that included a grand mall, crescent-shaped avenues, small circular parks and a Spanish Revival grand hotel that would, developers hoped, appeal to Northern tourists. It’s Georgia’s only known example of a Beaux Arts-influenced City Beautiful plan. Atlantic Avenue, the grand mall that runs from Maupas to 47th Street, is today lined with palm trees and large houses. Its piece de resistance, the Hotel Georgia, however, did not pan out. Ground for it was broken in 1912, and it was to have been built in the style of the old DeSoto Beach Hotel at Tybee Island. But, construction was delayed, and then what was completed was destroyed in the 1920s. In its place, the board of education put up a probably unintended architectural treasure in 1937, Savannah High School, now the Savannah Arts Academy. “The school, built in a simplified Beaux Arts style, is a landmark structure,” the National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form states. “It is significant as one of the major Federal building projects in Savannah during the Depression, and for its association with six of Savannah’s important early 20th-century architects.” The works of those and other architects – an all-star cast that includes Henrik Wallin, Hyman Witcover, Henry Urban,
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