THE GREAT FIRE OF 1820

Fueled in part by the usual combustibles, wooden roofs and buildings, and further energized by an unusual propellant, illegally stored gunpowder in City Market, the fire of Jan. 11, 1820, simply decimated downtown Savannah. Every building between Broughton and Bay streets, from Jefferson to Abercorn streets, was destroyed, except for the State and Planter’s banks, the Episcopal church and three other brick buildings.

“The town presents a most wretched picture,” according to a letter in the newspaper. “There is no estimating the loss – it is immense.” Another report added that “many hundreds of families are literally naked in the streets; not even clothing was saved.”

Citing “a calamity unexampled in the annals of this nation,” Savannah Mayor Thomas U.P. Charlton sent a national appeal for relief for the city’s “distressed and suffering people.” The response was immediate. I n all, $99,451.75 in c ash, along with considerable products and goods, was sent. O ne don ation, however, came with a controversial string attached to it.

New Y ork sent a generous amount, $12,000, but stipulated that it be applied to the relief of all indigent persons, “without distinction of color.” The year 1820 was also the year of the Missouri Compromise, and the discussion over the donation came amid the first flush of serious sectional dissension over slavery. A n indignant Savannah sent the money back: The needy, both black and white, had been the first to receive relief, the Savannah Rep ublican pointed out.

Still, the other donations, including $12,000 from Boston and $10,000 from Philadelphia, were spurring rebuilding efforts. I n the s pirit of the occasion, the Savannah V olun teers Guards rendered a toast on May 1 – “ Our cit y, R is ing like a Phoenix from its ashes, may she continue to rise until she rivals in splendor her sister cities of the N or th.”

That same month, three yellow fever deaths were recorded in the northeast quadrant of Savannah. Before the epidemic ended in O ct ober, more than 660 people, roughly a 10th of the city’s population, had died.

Once the cit y had recovered from that catastrophe, subsequent revitalization efforts were thwarted by a stagnant national economy, and then further hampered by an 1833 railroad line that connected A ug usta and Charleston. Georgia upland cotton had become a cash crop for South Carolina.

Fin ally, in 1843, the Central of Georgia R ailr oad completed its 190-mile route from Macon to Savannah. Between then and the start of the Civil War, some 75 percent of its revenues came from hauling cotton from upland Georgia plantations to Savannah to be loaded on ships and exported. I ts c ars also carried the full-fledged arrival of the long-stalled recovery.

A rchitects John N or ris and Charles B. Cluskey were among the newcomers to Savannah during that era. N or ris designed the U.S. Custom H o use on Bay Street, a four-years-in-the-making Greek

Re vival masterpiece that led to numerous other projects for him in the city. Cluskey, who had also sought the Custom H o use contract, contributed the Greek R e vival Champion mansion on Orleans Square and three brick, barrel-vaulted storerooms under the bluff between Bay Street and the Savannah R iv er.

This antebellum growth spurt faithfully followed Gen. James E. O glethorp e’s plan. The city’s blueprint burgeoned from 15 squares in 1815, to 18 in 1841, to the final figure of 24 in 1856. The attendant new streets, delineated by the narrow lots that Oglethorp e had dictated more than a century earlier, were soon fronted by tall row houses.

The houses, and many other downtown buildings, were generally constructed with Savannah grey bricks, kilned at the Her mitage Plantation, an industrial plantation some three miles upriver from city hall. There, H enr y McAlpin made bricks by the thousands, and also operated a foundry and a lumber mill.

A tree-lined urban park, conceived by William Brown Hodgson, configured by landscape architect William Christian Bischoff, and crowned by a water-spurting fountain in 1858, lent a sense of European sophistication to the city.

Distinctive houses, such as the Gothic Revival mansion for Charles Green on Madison Square, and the Italianate mansion being built on Monterey Square by John Norris, added to Savannah’s splendor.

The Savannah Morning News, in 1854, stated that “the busy marts and crowded streets bespeak the city’s prosperity. Its lines of deeply-laden ships and splendid steamers, and the daily arriving and departing lengthened railroad trains attest to its wealth.”

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “Architecture of the Old South: Georgia,” by Mills Lane; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Dr. Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; www. savannahga.gov; www.chsgeorgia.org.

almost 200 years after the great fire, savannah is growing and thriving.