The colony of Georgia was founded in 1733 as a proposed solution to London's poverty problem-and Savannah was meant to be the hub. The goal was to relocate the urban poor into the New World and set them up as farmers with plots of land for farming and gardens.
While admirable, the plan to resettle the poor was foolish in retrospect as the Low Country soil is sandy and the weather too hot for farming. However, the area did flourish from 1791 to 1851 as a mercantile city because of its port on the Savannah River just 17 miles from the Atlantic.
Today, the densely packed buildings in Savannah's original layout create an 'easy place to study the history of architecture in one snap,' says Jonathan Stalcup, the founder of Architectural Savannah, a tour company that covers 300 years of history in just a few blocks.
Savannah had moments of poverty at the right time for preservation. They couldn't tear anything down in the 1860s because the city was experiencing economic hardship, which inadvertently protected its historic architecture.
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