Sometimes my grown-up daughters tell me they were deprived because we never took them to Disneyworld for March break. "No," I reply. "We took you to Savannah, Charleston and Williamsburg instead. Count your blessings." Growing up in Belleville, Ontario, I heard the tales of the magic of these cities from my grandparents and my mother. They cherished recipes from the cookbooks they'd brought home and they took great care of the bits of china and silver they'd found there. And now, as I haunt the sale rooms of Canadian auction houses, I keep a sharp eye out for some of the southern antiques that turn up very occasionally; they are of little interest to most Canadians, which is a shame.
"Savannah is hanging onto its air of decadence," says Charleston writer Susan Sully, an expert in Southern architecture and design. "That's what makes it so damn sexy – you can't tell what's going on behind those facades."
No wonder General William T. Sherman lost his heart to Savannah in December 1864, when he captured the city on his bloody march to the sea through Georgia. Instead of destroying it, as his troops had done in Atlanta and in most of the southern cities they conquered, he settled into what is known as the Green-Meldrim House, now the parish house attached to St. John's Church. On December 22, 1864, Sherman scrawled a telegram to President Abraham Lincoln: "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah. With one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition. And also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton."
Until John Berendt published his wonderful book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in 1994, a story set in Savannah, I had hoped the place would remain a bit of a secret. After that, I knew it was all over, and I was right: tourism has soared nearly 50 percent since then. But if you love antiques, this is one of the South's great centres. You'll find a mix of the best 18th-century British furniture, porcelain and silver, along with early American furniture, earthenware and rare Chinese export porcelain. Although there were hundreds of silversmiths working in the United States from the mid-17th century, and most of them flourished in the north, around cities like Boston and Philadelphia, there are many fine examples from southern silversmiths here as well.
SAVANNAH INFO
Historic Savannah Foundation, 321 E. York St., Savannah, Ga. 31401 (912) 233-7787.
Tour the houses and gardens:
Sponsored by the Episcopal Women of Christ Church and the Foundation, the 67th annual Savannah Tour of Homes and Gardens will take place March 21 to 24, 2002. Christ Church, founded in 1733, is the oldest Episcopal congregation in the state.
Read:
John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and
Susan Sully's Savannah Style: Mystery and Manners.
When someone asked me once why I love Savannah so much, I said it's because it's the sexiest city I know. Here you have an exquisite late 18th-/early 19th-century town with attached houses arranged around more than 20 public squares. The facades are classic Italianate, Greek Revival or Gothic Revival, most in brick or stucco with raised entrances. Because the main access to the houses is through alleys at the back, there is a closed, secretive feeling to the streets. But then you touch the lush, tropical greenery, hear the bubble of fountains in hidden gardens, see ivy tumbling down walls and wisteria and roses twisting around iron gates. You might smell the briny tang of crawfish on the boil, or the sweetness of praline cooling in a window. It feels like Tuscany, or perhaps Provence.
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