B ACK TO THE FUTURE

ARDSLEY PARK & CHA THAM CRESCENT

the ellis square fountain

back to the fu tu re

The foundation of Gen. James E. Oglethorpe’s city plan was uniformity, but Savannah has shown over the years that it also prizes creativity, even when it’s mixed with a little controversy.

Ellis Square abounds with people these days as residents and tourists alike are charmed by its multi-use, open-space concept that gives children an opportunity to play, parents an underground place to park, and music lovers an occasion to pose next to a life-size statue of Savannah songwriter Johnny Mercer.

It was much like that in 1733 in another plan, Gen. James Oglethorpe’s original concept for the city. Early Decker Ward residents gathered in the square to socialize, and to participate in military drills. Its character changed, however, in 1763, when the city market shifted there from Wright Square. Over the next 191 years, four separate market structures stood in the square. The last one, an enormous Savannah-grey brick structure which welcomed customers for more than 80 years, was razed in 1954 to make room for a parking garage.

Preservations seethed in the wake of that decision, and formed Historic Savannah Foundation the next year. In 2005, a short time after the parking lot’s lease expired, it too fell to the wrecking ball. Contracting with the architectural firm of Lominack Kolman Smith, the city turned back the clock.

The project took several years to complete, and included 14 public meetings to discuss design principles, but the result became an immediate downtown attraction upon its opening in 2010. Its features include the four-level, 1,065-space parking garage, a visitors center, performance spaces, a fountain, and an adjacent plaza that’s a perfect place to sit and enjoy the ambience.

Again filled with people and conversations, it has brought back the spirit of the Colonial-era Ellis Square.

The venerable Telfair Academy seemed an unlikely agent for the loudest architectural argument in the city’s history. Constructed as a Regency-style mansion in 1818-1819 by acclaimed architect William Jay, and converted to an art museum in 1886 by American Institute of Architects cofounder Detlef Lienau, the institution thereafter reflected the rectitude of its benefactress, Mary Telfair.

That is, until 1998. In July of that year, the Telfair announced that it planned an expansion, a new building to house its collection of 20th and 21st-century art. A short time later, a committee unanimously chose Moshe Safdie and Associates Inc. to fashion the new Telfair building. After that, unanimity was in short supply.

Safdie’s credentials were superb. His firm’s design resume included the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard Business School’s Morgan Hall, the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, and the Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem.

None of that seemed to matter, though, after Safdie presented his first proposal in 1999. It drew the wrath of many residents, including prominent preservationists Mills B. Lane and Lee Adler. “The Telfair will be the loser if it builds a new museum that is detested because it violates the town plan,” Lane said.

A two-year-long, back-and-forth, exchange of ideas, proposals and opinions ensued, involving, but certainly not limited to, Safdie, the Historic Review Board and the City Council. It was all great fodder for the Letters to the Editor section of the Morning News, but it also gradually changed and arguably improved the building. The key compromise was the decision to add six stone columns to the glass façade that looks out onto Telfair Square.

The groundbreaking ceremony was held on Oct. 15, 2001, and the $24.5 million facility was named for local philanthropists Alice and Robert S. Jepson Jr. It finally opened on March 10, 2006. Now, 10 years later, the Jepson is a comfortable member of the Telfair Museums, attracting visitors with a wide range of distinctive, modern exhibits.

Perhaps Safdie, who encountered similar opposition to building that were eventually constructed and acclaimed in Vancouver and Ottawa, summed it up best in a 1999 Morning News article: “The criticism evaporates,” he said. “People just flock in and love it.”

An amalgamation of the antebellum past of Savannah, and the audacious vision of lead architect Christian Sottile, the SCAD Museum of Art has created a gleaming cultural center from the once crumbling remains of a railroad complex.

Built in 1853 with walls of Savannah grey bricks and floors of heart pine timbers, the warehouse for the Central of Georgia Railroad stretched more than 800 feet. It was a key structure in what is now the only standing pre-Civil War railroad station in the nation.

But, as rail traffic diminished, and eventually disappeared from downtown, the warehouse and adjoining depot fell into disrepair. In 2003, though it was recognized as National Historic Landmark, the warehouse was in such a precarious state that the city’s Historic Review Board dictated that the warehouse walls had to be stabilized with steel beams.

Sottile’s vision for the museum, which opened in 2011, did much more than just shore up those bricks: It made them an art form that supports and contrasts with an 86-foot-high, steel-and-glass lantern that shines like a beacon as it beckons art lovers to the entrance.

With 82,000 square feet of space, the cutting-edge museum contains a wealth of display space, along with 10 classrooms, two study suites and a 250-seat theater. Its permanent collections include the Walter O. Evans Center for African American Studies, which includes works from renowned artists Jacob Lawrence, Clementine Hunter, Romare Bearden and others; the Andre Leon Talley Gallery, which displays garments from modern fashion designers; and the Earle W. Newton Collection of British and American art.

“We have centuries of layering throughout the site,” Sottile said in a 2011 Morning News article. “It’s a building that could only have happened in Savannah and at SCAD.”

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; www.lksarchitects.com; www.telfair.org, usatoday30.usatoday.com; www.scadmoa.org. old savannah city mar et prior to demolition