Built in 1950, the Virginia Apartments are a Colonial Revival multi-unit complex made up of two identical buildings, located side by side. Many of the original elements survive in the apartments, but doors, shutters and windows have been replaced. This was the first place my parents lived after they got married in 1967. My mother said that many newlyweds lived here at the time.
The apartments were owned by John Henry “Jack” Mayes, Jr., (1914-1989), the son of British immigrant “Captain Jack” Mayes (1881-1960), who ran the Fitzgerald Cotton Mills. Jack, Jr.’s brother, Garbert (1906-1954), who was also involved in the mills, was the father of author Frances Mayes.
What an interesting story, particularly the connection to author Frances Mayes! Thank you for that background.
These buildings are reminiscent of a similar set of buildings on Abercorn and 63rd Streets in Savannah, called the Abercorn Terrace Apts. My parents lived there for about a year when they got married, in 1950. Then they bought a house a few blocks away, at 59th and Reynolds Streets, where they raised me and my four brothers. That was then Savannah’s “southside,” before the city more than doubled in size by expanding ever further southward, over the next few decades.
The Abercorn Terrace Apts. were finally torn down a few years ago and replaced with a larger set of apartments that were originally going to be housing for Savannah College of Art & Design students. That somehow changed, and now they are just commercially available.
These apartments have the advantage of not only being on a major north-south city bus route, they also are adjacent to the Habersham (Street) Shopping Center, which includes a grocery store, gas station, several restaurants and other shops, and an adjacent elementary school.