In 1941, federal officials constructed the main building of Savannah's first black public housing project in the image of one of the South's most famous plantation mansions.
Sixty years later, Savannahians are divided over whether the Yamacraw Administration Building is great architecture, important history or a not-so-subtle reminder of the city's slavery past.
Last week, the City Council decided the building should be preserved and added it to the Historic Buildings Map. Its inclusion acknowledges the building as a local treasure and adds several extra layers of protection against demolition.
The move touched off a small controversy among officials, historians and those who live in Yamacraw Village -- public housing just west of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The building is a replica of the Hermitage Plantation, where more than 200 slaves made bricks and other products before the Civil War.
The administration building's owner, the federal Housing Authority of Savannah, never wanted the historic designation. Officials there say it was a racist statement made during a segregated time. It's used as a community center and for housing administration, but the building's design, with its second-floor entrance and small spaces, was never very practical for either use.
The Hermitage mansion.
Photo from Eden on the Marsh by Edward Chan Sieg
Yamacraw residents grapple with what to make of the building. Those who know its history say it is a slap in the face, but acknowledge it is only a symbol. Residents face many important issues, they say, but this is not one of them.
"I think it was the worst idea, putting that building down here where black people live we're trying to get away from (slavery), not be reminded of it," said Brenda Johnson, president of the Yamacraw Residents Association. "But I place this on the same list as the (former state) flag I don't really care, because I know who I am and we know who we are."
Does the building deserve to be saved, watching over the low-income tenements much as the plantation mansion watched over dozens of slave cabins more than 150 years ago? Or should it be torn down as a gesture that Savannah has moved on?
Some have proposed a third option: Save the building, but acknowledge what it represents, and alter it in a way that shows residents have overcome.
"We are very much impacted by the things we see every day," said Arnie Cooper, dean of the Georgia Southern University College of Education, and a professor of African-American studies. "Savannah is a city of memorials, and nothing is inoffensive. Everything is fair game for very different perspectives and very different interpretations."
Joining a historic club
A structure must be at least 50 years old to be considered historic and listed on the Historic Buildings Map. A structure must be acknowledged as an important part of the city's cultural heritage in order to be included. The designation imposes a maximum 12-month stay on any proposed demolition, and provides an opportunity for public comment on the plans.
A Memorial to What?
Slaves built the Hermitage mansion for Henry McAlpin around 1825 on 400 acres of land along the Savannah River, now the site of International Paper. They made McAlpin rich by operating a Home Depot of sorts on the plantation, mass-producing cast iron products, rice barrels, lumber, and most famously large quantities of Savannah gray brick.
The mansion was an original, with twin, curved staircases leading to a towered entrance on the parlor floor and shaved corners. The parties there were lavish affairs, much anticipated by Savannah society.
When Gen. William Sherman marched through Savannah, his troops gutted the mansion, and it deteriorated in the ensuing decades. In 1935, automobile magnate Henry Ford bought the Hermitage, disassembled the bricks, and built his own plantation home with them in Richmond Hill.
Several homes in Savannah, however, replicated many of the details. A home between Bull and Abercorn streets in Ardsley Park is a replica.
The Yamacraw Administration Building was built five years after the Hermitage demolition. Rather than being inspired by the plantation mansion, it appears architect Cletus Bergen was creating a near-full-sized memorial to it.
"In its day, it was considered faux architecture it was literally copying the Hermitage. It was a fake," said Hugh Golson, chairman of the Historic District Board of Review and a history teacher.
When a structure is considered for the Historic Buildings Map, its architecture, craftsmanship, and place in history are evaluated. In the case of the Yamacraw building, the latter criteria drove the designation.
"The Administration Building on Bryan Street is notable because its design is inspired by the Hermitage Plantation," wrote Historic Preservation Officer Beth Reiter. "This building is considered part of the city's cultural heritage and is worthy of protection."
Her recommendation was unanimously approved by the Metropolitan Planning Commission, and received nothing but praise from the City Council, which adopted it June 14.
The building's inclusion was part of a larger effort initiated last year to include more buildings on the map on the east and west sides of the city. That was in response to the demolition of several historic buildings in traditionally black sections of the city in recent years.
Last year, 97 buildings in the Beach Institute area and 44 buildings along the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard corridor were added to the map.
At the Housing Authority's request, the Yamacraw Administration Building was removed from the proposed list last year. Housing Authority officials argued that the designation would make it more difficult to get a $16 million Hope VI grant to rebuild the Garden Homes housing project.
With the grant awarded last year, the MPC ignored that request this time around, to the consternation of authority officials.
Metropolitan Planning Commissioner Timothy Mackey said Yamacraw Village is now a prime piece of real estate. Hotels are sprouting all around it, and it has direct views of the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge. A few years ago, rumors were so rampant that the Savannah College of Art and Design was going to buy the project land that a community meeting was held to dispel them.
The designation is important, he said, to help protect an area so vital to local black history.
"There are so many blacks important to the history of Savannah that came out of Yamacraw," Mackey said. "We must do everything we can to save it."
Though there are no specific plans on the books, the authority would eventually like to renovate or demolish the administration building to make it more functional for residents. Officials said they are not even sure the city has the authority to vote a historic designation on a federal building.
"The building is obsolete and has become difficult to maintain," said Sandra Glicken, the Housing Authority's public information officer. "The planners who designed the building were obviously trying to make a statement, and really were not concerned about good use of space."
Johnson, of the residents association, tried to make that point as she entered the ground floor of the administration building last week.
In the Hermitage mansion, McAlpin located his offices and wine cellar in this space. A barred window opening from the wine cellar was apparently the source of much speculation, according to a 1916 souvenir booklet from the Hermitage: "Tour guides usually pointed (it) out as the grating to the 'dungeon,' where refractory slaves were plunged into solitary confinement. This is absurd, of course, because no Southern gentleman would this convert his home and mansion into a jail."
In the Yamacraw building, the doors open to a bustling recreation room short on space. Dozens of children crowd around bumper pool, Foosball and pool tables. Others run through the small spaces around them, creating a tidy scene of chaos.
Johnson points to the trophy shelf crowded and sagging with no more space for a growing number of trophies the housing project's track team has won. Upstairs, there is no longer a library. The tutorial room is active, she said, but too small. The children need a gym.
It's a bad structure, she said, but look at all that is happening in there.
"Right now, it's a positive building," Johnson said. "I don't care what it represented then. Look at what it represents now."
What's in an Image?
Savannah's history is told through its buildings and monuments, and they sometimes stir people's emotions. Of the 43 public monuments in Savannah, none features a black person -- a fact often raised by proponents of the proposed African-American Monument.
"I think there are buildings and then there are buildings we're not talking about some monument that symbolizes uplift," Cooper said. "I think we have to acknowledge that you don't need to have a plantation to have symbols of paternalism and segregation. And it's too easy for whites to say we want to keep a building because it was the first, irrespective of what it stands for. It's a decision that rightfully belongs in the African-American community."
Yamacraw residents were never consulted about the historic designation. But according to Johnson, most of the residents there aren't aware of the building's history anyway.
Historian W. W. Law, who knows Yamacraw better than perhaps anyone, said he would have liked to see the entire housing project, not just the administration building, declared historic.
Yamacraw Village the area itself, not just the housing project is an important part of Savannah's history. The Yamacraw Indians first occupied the site. Later, Jews cast out of czarist Russia congregated on the land. Runaway slaves gathered in Yamacraw before the Civil War, departing there in search of freedom. And First Bryan Baptist Church, one of the first African-American congregations established in the United States, is located there.
There was no symbolism behind the administration building's construction, Law said. After losing the Hermitage -- following an energetic attempt by the citizens of Savannah to save it -- officials merely wanted a reminder of it in the community.
"We have no business to allow our prejudices to jump to hasty conclusions," Law said, his voice shaking with anger. "Nobody should have to remind us of our slavery existence. It doesn't take a building to make us remember."
City Alderman David Jones said the building is now a symbol of uplift.
"Out of the plantation and up to freedom that's what it represents," Jones said.
But even if the worst that is said about the building is true that it was built in the image of the Hermitage to remind black residents who live there that they will never be truly free that doesn't mean it should go.
"The Hermitage Plantation is a part of our past and slavery is a horrible part of that, but it's important we save those to teach the present and future generations about that past," said Mark McDonald, executive director of the Historic Savannah Foundation. "All of our history is important, not just the parts we like."
Golson recommended developing the patchy yard in front of the building, erecting in it markers that treat the history of the building in an even-handed way. It could even be built in conjunction with the proposed Wessels Community Park, the long-delayed Savannah-style square that is expected to be built later this summer about a block away in Yamacraw.
Jerome Meadows, the artist deigning the Wessels Park, said he once worked on a project involving a segregated cemetery that was tearing apart Salisbury, N. C. A granite wall separated the white and black sections of the cemetery, and the town was split on whether to keep it or tear it down.
The solution was to create an opening in the wall, acknowledging the past but sending a message that the community has gotten past it.
"My sense in cases like this is you want to let the history be known, but it is incumbent to face it with a new level of understanding," said Meadows, who said something like a mural may be appropriate. "You have to make some statement that counters whatever negative aspects of that history may be. You want to give the building some sense of belonging."
City Hall/urban affairs reporter Bret Bell can be reached at email@example.com or 652-0456.
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Yamacraw time line (June 24, 2001).