The students and I have been very busy over the past few weeks tracking down relevant documents relating to the history of the Ardsley Park and Chatham Crescent neighbourhoods. We found wonderful records at the Municipal Archives at City Hall: amazing planning and engineering maps showing early iterations of the urban plans for this part of Savannah, along with automobile registration records (remarkable number of electric cars in the 19-teens!), building permits, and municipal ordinances. The best finds included an ink on vellum plan of Estill Avenue (now Victory Drive) showing C-shaped earthworks (probably Civil War-era defences) all along the street’s south side; a blueprint showing an alternative design (never adopted) for one of the traffic circles in Chatham Crescent; and a large ink and watercolour map showing an early (1903) proposal for laying out streets south of Victory Drive, prior to the conception of either of the two neighbourhoods we’re studying and also showing the location of “Sunnyside,” the enclave of 200 African-American houses removed for the development of Ardsley Park. At the Chatham County Courthouse this week, we used the title records compiled in the 1920s by a real estate attorney named Victor Schreck, to locate the early title deeds to a representative selection of houses. Several deeds included restrictive racial and architectural covenants that would incite riots today. The students are finishing up their analyses of selective buildings, combining Sanborn maps, City Directories, Censuses, Cadastral survey information and the deeds, along with research on architectural style to build a picture of the architectural and social make up of differently sized houses throughout these neighbourhoods. Over the next month, the students and I will each be authoring a short essay on a given topic relating to the evolution of these neighbourhoods:
Suburbanization; original land ownership; early developments in the area; developers and their ambitions; automobile suburbs — Kristin Rourke
Urban design of typical suburbs; City Beautiful Movement; relationship of the two neighbourhhods to the Savannah plan; landscape features — Bradley Allen
Trends in civic architecture in early 20th century; public/anchor buildings proposed and built in Chatham Crescent; proposed resort hotel; Savannah High School; Charles Ellis Elementary — Bridgid Byrne
Architectural patterns, styles and features seen in the two neighbourhoods and their relationship to regional and national trends — Prof. Robin Williams
Today our class visited the City of Savannah Research Library and Municipal Archives at City Hall. Luciana Spracher, the city’s archivist, provided an orientation, which included a tour of the records rooms in the basement. We were introduced to several different kinds of documents related to the Ardsley Park/Chatham Crescent research project, including city ordinances, building permits, inspections books (showing property values), property surveys, municipal maps — including a landscape plan for planting trees in the area. Luciana made lots of good suggestions for proceeding. Thank you, Luciana, for an excellent orientation.
Architectural History students in the Research Methods in Architectural History class this fall are focusing their class efforts on doing research on the Ardsley Park-Chatham Crescent neighbourhood, which will celebrate its centennial in 2010. In preparation for that anniversary, the department was invited by Jo Hickson, President of the Ardsley Park-Chatham Crescent Garden Club, to research and write a commemorative booklet examining the history of the neighbourhood, its defining urban and architectural features and discuss its significance as one of the earliest automobile suburbs in America. Hickson visited our Research Methods class on Oct. 8 to present an overview of information about the neighbourhood and to plan out the topics to be studied.
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