This is now a vacation rental known as the Screened Inn.
Fort Screven Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Enlisted Men’s Mess Hall, Circa 1925, Tybee Island
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Tag Archives: National Register of Historic Places
Army Mess Hall, 1905, Tybee Island
Fort Screven Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Army Housing, Circa 1912, Tybee Island
This is a preliminary identification. I’ll be photographing/rephotographing the Fort Screven district soon, and will be updating structures as I learn more about them.
Fort Screven Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Fort Screven Bakery, 1925, Tybee Island
The post bakery has served as a private residence for many years.
Fort Screven Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Non-Commissioned Officers Latrine, Circa 1920, Tybee Island
This is one of numerous support structures transformed into private residences after 1945, when Fort Screven was declared surplus by the War Department.
Fort Screven Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Fort Screven Batteries, 1899, Tybee Island
Battery Brumby [completed 1899] was the largest of Fort Screven’s complex of gun emplacements. Constructed between 1897-1900. the batteries [Brumby, Garland, Fenwick, Backus, Gant, and Habersham] served as coastal fortifications during the Spanish-American War. Between the world wars, the artillery was removed and melted for further use.
Battery Garland [completed 1899] now houses the Tybee Island Museum, operated by the Tybee Island Historical Society.
Fort Screven Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Torrey-West House, 1926, Ossabaw Island
Built as the winter residence of Dr. Henry Norton Torrey, Ossabaw’s Spanish Revival “Main House” was designed by Swedish-born Savannah architect Henrik Wallin [1873-1936]. Its pink stucco walls, whose tones vary widely with the changing light of the day, are a defining feature. Red clay roof tiles and wrought iron ornamentation complete the Mediterranean character of the house. [There is no public access to the house, which the Ossabaw Island Foundation hopes to eventually stabilize and restore].
The Torrey family had owned a 40-room winter residence, Greenwich, in Savannah. They bought Ossabaw Island after Greenwich burned, and built the house between 1924-1926. Dr. Torrey was a prominent Detroit physician whose wife Nell Ford Torrey was the granddaughter of John Baptiste Ford, the founder of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (PPG). Dr. Ford died in 1945 and upon his wife’s death in 1959, the island was inherited by their daughter Eleanor “Sandy” Torrey West and her late brother’s heirs. But Sandy was the only one interested in living there full-time and it became her domain.
In 1961, Sandy and husband Clifford West established the Ossabaw Island Foundation, which served as an artist’s colony from October until June each year. Sandy sold the island to the State of Georgia (via the Nature Conservancy) in 1978, retaining a life estate. She lived in the Main House until 2016, at which time she moved to Savannah to an assisted living facility.
At 105, Sandy West remains a beloved symbol of independence for her tireless efforts to protect Ossabaw from development. Jane Fishman profiled her in a fascinating book, The Woman Who Saved an Island: The Story of Sandy West and Ossabaw Island, (Real People Publishing, Savannah, 2014).
The rear of the house features a loggia opening onto a patio. A tennis court and formal gardens have long since been reclaimed by nature.
Outbuildings, like the house, are in a bad state of repair today.
National Register of Historic Places
Mercer House, Circa 1868, Savannah
Due to the success of John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the book Savannah loves to hate, the Mercer House is perhaps the most famous in town. T0day, it’s officially the Mercer-Williams House Museum. [I added the hyphen; I don’t know why they don’t use one]. It is owned by the sister of Jim Williams, the antiques dealer who shot and killed one of his lovers, a hustler named Danny Hansford, in the house. Everyone knows the story. Wiliams’s eclectic collections are highlighted throughout.
The house was designed by John Norris [architect of the Savannah Custom House and the Andrew Low House, among many others] for General Hugh Mercer, great-grandfather of Johnny Mercer, though the general nor the songwriter ever lived here. Construction began in 1860 but was interrupted by the Civil War. It was completed about 1868 by its new owner, John Wilder. In the 20th century it was used for a time as the Savannah Shriners Alee Temple and was purchased and restored by Jim Williams in 1969.
Two other tragic deaths are associated with the Mercer House. An owner tripped over a banister and eventually died from a concussion in 1913 and a boy chasing pigeons on the roof fell off and impaled himself on one of the iron fence posts in 1969.
Savannah Historic District, National Historic Landmark
Rossiter House, Circa 1797, Sparta
This house, said to be the oldest in Sparta, has grown up around an original log structure, through tasteful additions over the centuries. Built for Dr. Timothy Rossiter, it was purchased by Elias Boyer in 1812. It is sometimes referred to as the Rossiter-Little House, as the Little family owned it from the 1830s until the late 20th century.
In The Architecture of Middle Georgia: The Oconee Area, (University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1972) John Linley identifies the lattice work on the front of the house as “sheaf of wheat” and notes that it is a light and delicate but unexpectedly sturdy type lattice which seems particularly suitable to the South. [It is] too generally underappreciated and a rapidly disappearing feature of many antebellum homes. It is present on a few houses in Hancock and Baldwin counties.
Sparta Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Howell House, Sparta
This house is log underneath and is early antebellum, I think.