SAVANNAH — Lucy Brannen and Catharine Varnedoe had a realization last year: Few Savannahians seem to remember the women who founded the city’s historic preservation movement.
The cousins are leading an effort to make sure those seven women — whose rescue of the Davenport House in the 1950s formed the Historic Savannah Foundation — are recognized in a public space.
A historic monument in Columbia Square, near the Davenport House, has been proposed in memory of Katherine Judkins Clark, Elinor Adler Dillard, Anna Colquitt Hunter, Lucy Barrow McIntire, Dorothy Ripley Roebling, Nola McEvoy Roos and Jane Adair Wright.
The monument’s preliminary design was approved July 1 by the Savannah-Chatham County Historic Site and Monument Commission. It will consist of a granite slab with plaques depicting the women’s silhouettes and outlining their accomplishments. Organizers hope the final design will be approved in time to unveil the monument for the foundation’s 70th anniversary next year.
Brannen and Varnedoe, whose grandmother was Lucy Barrow McIntire, one of the preservationists, dreamed up the monument around the time the former Calhoun Square was renamed Taylor Square. Susie King Taylor, a nurse and educator who lived in Savannah in the 1800s, last summer became the first woman to have a local square named after her.
Early in the process, Brannen said, a friend suggested naming the square for the women who saved the Davenport House. But most people didn’t seem to know much about them, so she and her cousin resolved to change that.
“Everyone we talked to at that time had forgotten or didn’t even know this story, and that was shocking,” Brannen said.
Varnedoe remembers being at her grandmother’s house in 1955 when Anna Colquitt Hunter said a funeral home planned to tear down the Davenport House to build a parking lot. Hunter and McIntire sprung to action, recruiting five women to help them raise money to buy the house.
The women pulled together $22,500 from the community to save the 1820 Federal-style home, which became a museum. Their efforts led to the formation of the Historic Savannah Foundation, which has gone on to preserve more than 400 structures in Savannah’s National Historic Landmark District.
Brannen said City Market had been torn down a year earlier for a parking deck, which “was just a real wakeup call, I think, to the community.” Some business leaders wanted to make room for redevelopment, she said, but the women helped push preservation to the forefront.
The group sent the message that “we’ve got something that’s really a treasure” with the city’s historic neighborhoods, Varnedoe said, “and people believed them and they listened to them.”
Savannah was founded in 1733 by Gen. James Oglethorpe, Georgia’s colonial governor. In 1966, downtown was designated a national landmark district.
“It was exciting to see how Savannah changed. Things that were derelict were getting restored,” Varnedoe said of the preservation movement’s progress over the decades. “It was wonderful.”
Now, the women’s families hope the monument will educate downtown visitors about the historic effort that helped Savannah become a travel destination. They have raised more than half of the $35,000 required to pay for the monument and its installation and upkeep, Brannen said, mostly from members of the families so far.
Brannen said she sees the monument inspiring young women as well. Varnedoe noted that the work the group did as women living in the 1950s “was kind of groundbreaking, certainly in the South.”
Varnedoe said they hope the monument also will remind people that preservation is still important.
“It’s living history, because people live here,” Varnedoe said of the historic district. “We love to share it with people, but we don’t want it changed so that it’s unrecognizable.”
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