The Harper Fowlkes House was built by prominent architect Charles B. Cluskey as a Greek Revival townhouse for Savannah shipping magnate Stephen Gardner on Orleans Square in 1844. Financial difficulties soon compelled Gardner to sell the house to his brother, who then sold it to Aaron Champion (1792-1880). Champion’s daughter, Maria Sophia McAlpin (1832-1890), used the house for in-town entertaining while living at the Hermitage Plantation. Her husband James McAlpin was a trustee of that property. By 1895, Maria’s son, Henry McAlpin (1860-1931) and his second wife, Isabel, were living in the house, and Isabel was responsible for the addition of a third floor and mansard roof, to accommodate servants. Alida Harper Fowlkes (1908-1985) purchased the home, which today bears her name, for $9000 in 1939. Mrs. Fowlkes, who owned the Georgian Tea Room in the Olde Pink House in the 1930s and 1940s, later became an antiques dealer and preservationist, restoring ten houses in Savannah. In her will, she left the house to the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Georgia and stipulated it never be sold. It is operated as a house museum today by the Coastal Heritage Society.

Savannah National Historic Landmark District, National Register of Historic Places