Savannah High School traces its origins to Chatham Academy, a school chartered in 1788. During the Great Depression, this campus was built by the Public Works Administration around the foundation of a hotel whose developers went bankrupt. It was said to be the largest public school building in the United States at the time.
The school was integrated relatively early, in 1963, by twelve African-American students. In 1997, Savannah High relocated and this campus became the Savannah Arts Academy.
Ardsley Park-Chatham Crescent Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 
Thank you for sharing this! My maternal aunts & uncles (and some cousins) all attended this school (or “Commercial” High School if it was part of SHS), and most graduated. My cousins attended & graduated in the late 1970s. I was not aware it was built on the foundations of an abandoned/failed hotel!