🏛️ CulturalDay trip · from Savannah, GA

Savannah Historic District: Squares, Mercer-Williams & SCAD

Savannah's historic district is one of the largest in the United States and one of the most intact — a 2.5-square-mile grid of 22 park squares laid out by James Oglethorpe in 1733 as the original colony plan, each square flanked by residential and commercial lots with the church and civic buildings at the trust lots at the square ends. The plan was replicated as Savannah grew but most of the 22 original squares survive, maintaining Oglethorpe's 18th-century urban vision in a working 21st-century city. The Mercer-Williams House is the most notorious address in Savannah — the 1860 Italianate mansion where antiques dealer Jim Williams shot his companion Danny Hansford in 1981, generating the 8-year legal saga John Berendt documented in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994). The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) has acquired and restored more than 60 historic Savannah buildings as campus facilities; their SCAD Museum of Art is the most significant contemporary art venue in the region.

Day 1 — Savannah historic squares walk (Chippewa, Madison, Forsyth Park), Mercer-Williams House, Colonial Park Cemetery, SCAD Museum of Art, return

Day 1 — Savannah Historic District

📍 4 stops

🌅

Morning

Savannah Historic Squares Walk

★ 4.7

James Oglethorpe's 1733 ward plan laid out in a walkable grid of 22 park squares — each square flanked by residential lots on the sides and trust lots (civic and religious buildings) at the ends. The plan was the first town-planning scheme in North America to incorporate neighborhood parks into the street grid as a continuous system rather than as isolated greenspaces. Chippewa Square (the Forest Gump bus bench filming location), Madison Square, Crawford Square, and Monterey Square (with its famous Mercer-Williams House facing it) are the key squares in the historic district core.

8:00 AM📍 See location

🍽️

Lunch

Mercer-Williams House Museum

★ 4.6

The 1860 Italianate Mercer-Williams House on Monterey Square — the home of antiques dealer and preservationist Jim Williams, the setting of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994), and one of the most significant private restoration projects in 20th-century Savannah. Williams purchased the dilapidated mansion in 1969 and restored it to its period grandeur; he was tried four times for the 1981 shooting of Danny Hansford (acquitted all four times). The house is now a museum operated by Williams' estate; guided 30-minute tours cover both the architecture and the notorious history.

9:00 AM📍 See location

☀️

Afternoon

Colonial Park Cemetery & SCAD Museum of Art

★ 4.7

Colonial Park Cemetery (1750-1853) — Savannah's oldest public cemetery, containing the graves of Button Gwinnett (Georgia's signer of the Declaration of Independence, killed in a duel in 1777), multiple Revolutionary War soldiers, and yellow fever epidemic victims. The 1820s iron fence and the above-ground tabby tombs reflect the coastal Georgia burial tradition. The SCAD Museum of Art (adjacent, in the 1853 Central of Georgia Railway building) presents the School's student and contemporary exhibition program in the most architecturally significant railroad building in Savannah.

12:00 PM📍 See location

🌙

Evening

Forsyth Park — Evening Stroll

★ 4.8

Forsyth Park — Savannah's largest public greenspace, 30 acres with a cast-iron fountain (1858, modeled after a Paris original), a Confederate memorial, and the Forsyth Park Café. The park is the living room of the historic district; evening hours bring residents out for the fountain's evening light and the Spanish moss-draped live oaks. The park café is the standard Savannah coffee and meeting place.

5:00 PM📍 See location

Plan your own escapeExplore more trips →