Savannah, Georgia:
Tourism Textbook Town by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
When
my husband Laurent and I were visiting Atlanta one year, we made a weekend trip
to the seaport city of Savannah, Georgia.
I
wanted to see Savannah, because I had read John Berendt’s In the Garden of Good and Evil.
I wanted to brunch and people watch for the real-life, eccentric book
characters in a town that allows you to take a cup of your favorite beverage
with you down the street.
When
I did some research on tourism information for Savvanah, I was surprised to
find the following figures on the importance of tourism to Savannah in a
WOTC.com article for 2018:
“14
million people visited Savannah in 2018 and helped employ 27,000 year-round
tourism workers.
These
tourists spent 3 billion dollars in Savannah in 2018.”
The
article writer featured a couple who had come back to Savannah several times,
because Savannah offers a variety of activities to do and places to visit.
These
are impressive figures in a city of 146,000 residents (source: World Population Review/us-cities).
Berendt’s
book discusses how Savannah’s founder James Oglethorpe (1696 – 1785) laid out
the city around squares, which are one of the city’s main tourism draws for
urban planning and architecture.
The
Moon Savannah Handbook notes that
Oglethorpe laid out the original city site as “a series of rectangular ‘wards’
each constructed around a central square at the city’s founding in 1733. The founding of Savannah coincides with the
founding of the Georgia colony, which later became the State of Georgia.
I
was expecting to find a very English city when we visited, but found Haitian,
Polish, and African American points of interest to visit as well Victorian
architecture.
Savannah’s
Haitian connection is linked to its most photogenic monument – the Saint John
the Baptist Cathedral. The Cathedral is
a brick church that has been covered in stucco and painted white. Ephraim Francis Baldwin (1837 – 1916) built
the Cathedral in the French Gothic style; it glistens in the subtropical
Georgia sun with its symmetrical spires.
The
visually pleasing Cathedral needs palm trees to make it look like a port stop
on a Caribbean cruise. It is not the
original church that was founded in the 1700s, but maintains the aesthetics of
the Haitian emigrés, who arrived in Savannah after the “successful overthrow of
the colonial government by a slave uprising in the 1700s” in that country
according to Moon Savannah Handbook.
Restorations
and fires have changed the interior of Saint John the Baptist , especially with
the addition of stained glass windows.
The newest additions to the Cathedral are an Italian marble altar and an
Italian marble baptismal font.
Today
Savannah’s significant Irish population worships in the Saint John the Baptist
Cathedral. The American author Flannery
O’Connor lived across from the Cathedral.
Her home is open to the public, and a non-profit organization organizes
readings of her works.
The
Forsyth Park Square is the most famous square in Savannah, but the Monterey
Square has the most impressive monument; a 55-foot Monument dedicated to the
Polish Count Casimir Pulaski (1745 – 1779) who was killed while trying to
retake Savannah from the British during the Revolutionary War. The Count is remembered as one of the
founders of the American cavalry in many statues throughout the U.S.
Other
foreigners who fought in the American Revolutionary War have monuments in
Savannah, too, such as the Haitians who have a monument in City Market.
Supreme
Court Justice Clarence Thomas studied at the Carnegie Library for “black
students” on Henry Street.
The
First African Baptist Church is located in City Market. The Second African Baptist Church in Green
Square is where General Tecumseh Sherman (1820 – 1891) delivered his “40 acres
and a Mule” speech.
All
along the Georgia coast on its islands live the Gullah (South Carolina word) or
Geechee (Georgia word). These African
Americans are descendants of slaves from West Africa, who maintain African
culinary and cultural traditions. You
can easily buy Gullah baskets by the side of the road and sample their dishes
in many restaurants.
The
Georgia coast islands have always had beach homes for rent, which is a nice
option for large families to consider to keep costs down on vacation. Several islands that are set up for tourism
with activities, lodging, or restaurants include:
-Tybee
Island – Fort Pulaski and Water Sports
-Hilton
Head – expensive as it is a golf venue, but it houses the Georgia Sea Turtle
Center for a day trip.
-Jekyll
Island – Former playground of the rich and famous in the early 20th
century
-St.
Simons Island
-Sapelo
Island
-Butler
Island
These
islands are connected to the mainland for the most part by bridges, but you can
also reach them by motorboat. The city
of Savvanah is served by Hilton Head-Savannah International Airport in addition
to freeways.
As
I mentioned, Savannah employs 27,000 year-round tourism employees by seeking
out overnight, short-term, and long-term visitors at all income levels. Savannah deserves a visit just to see how
they are able to organize their tourism industry for $3 billion worth of
tourism dollars in 2018.
