BUZZ
O L D S AVA N N A H
A Taste of History Savannah’s famed The Olde Pink House offers a dining experience 250 years in the making Written by TJ LAGGIS
BRICKS THAT BLED, staining the once-white house pink. A fire that charred the walls of its upper-story ballroom. The throws of Yellow Fever in the 19th century and the COVID-19 pandemic this past year, both of which shuttered doors across the city. One simply has to ask, how has this blush-colored gem from Savannah’s antiquity withstood the trials of time?
Photography by ANGELA HOPPER-LEE
“They don’t build them like they used to,” jokes Craig Jeffress, general manager of The Olde Pink House. “This home has incredible bones.” Throughout the course of its 250-year history, The Olde Pink House has changed hands many times. James Habersham Jr., the pioneering merchant and wealthy planter, built the original residence in 1771
on a land allotment granted by the Crown of England. In 1811, a decade after his passing, Habersham’s halls became home to the vaults of Planters’ Bank, the first bank in Georgia. Later still, in 1864, the house became a military generals’ headquarters for Union troops following Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s Civil War Siege of Savannah.
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