Savannah Travel Guide
The Squares Walk
The self-guided masterclass — the Bull Street spine's five great squares with their stories and facades, the detour loops east and west, Jones Street's famous block, and the architecture vocabulary that unlocks every ward.
Savannah's squares reward walkers who know what they're looking at — and the knowledge transfers square to square, because Oglethorpe's 1733 ward system repeats its logic across the grid. This guide walks the spine, names the details, and hands over the vocabulary; two hours at stroll pace, flat shoes, morning or golden hour, to-go cup optional and legal.
The system in one paragraph. Each ward centers a square, flanked east-west by trust lots (reserved for churches and public buildings — hence the cathedrals and institutes commanding square fronts) and north-south by tything lots (the townhouse rows). The repeating pattern calmed traffic three centuries before planners had the term, parcels the district into green rooms, and explains the rhythm you'll feel: build-up, square, release, repeat. Twenty-two of twenty-four survive; the two lost to a 1950s highway ramp are the preservation movement's cautionary scripture, and Ellis — resurrected from a parking garage in 2010 — is its resurrection hymn.
The Bull Street spine (the essential ninety minutes). Start at City Hall's gold dome and walk south. Johnson Square (1733, the first): the banking ward, Nathanael Greene's obelisk, the clock and fountains — note the trust lots' institutional faces. Wright Square: Tomochichi's granite boulder (the Yamacraw chief who made the colony possible, honored a century late) and the gilded Gordon monument — the ward layout at its most legible. Chippewa Square: Oglethorpe's bronze by Daniel Chester French (Lincoln Memorial's sculptor), the Gump bench site on the north side (the prop lives in the history museum), and the Savannah Theatre's neon — the city's living-room square. Madison Square: the Green-Meldrim House's Gothic Revival (Sherman's headquarters — the Christmas telegram offering Lincoln the city was written here; tour it when open) against the Sorrel-Weed's haunted Greek Revival — one square, the war's two Savannah stories. Monterey Square: the district's beauty queen — Pulaski's monument under the heaviest canopy, Mercer-Williams House's Italianate bulk (the Midnight house; tours daily) and congregation Mickve Israel's Gothic synagogue (the South's oldest congregation, tours weekdays) facing each other across the oaks. Exit south to Forsyth's fountain: the walk's crescendo.
The vocabulary that unlocks the facades. Savannah's townhouses read in sequence: Federal (delicate fanlights, Davenport's era), Greek Revival (columned porticos, the 1840s cotton money), Italianate (bracketed eaves, tall arched windows, the 1850s), Second Empire (mansard roofs — Hamilton-Turner's wedding cake), and Victorian's painted exuberance south of Gaston. The ironwork tells its own story — note the difference between cast (molded, mass-produced, the balconies' lace) and wrought (hand-hammered, the older rails and boot scrapers), and find the dolphin downspouts on the finest houses. Haint blue porch ceilings (the Gullah tradition's spirit-confusing sky color) appear once noticed, everywhere after.
The detour loops. East loop (forty minutes): Columbia Square's quiet (Davenport and Kehoe houses), Greene Square's clapboard modesty (the free Black community's historic ward — the district's underrated history), and Washington Square toward the Trustees Garden. West loop: Orleans Square's fountain, Pulaski and Chatham's residential calm, and the Jefferson Street approach to City Market. And the one street that outranks its squares: Jones Street between Bull and Whitaker — the brick-and-oak block "Jones Street" was coined gorgeous for — with Mrs. Wilkes' boarding-house lunch line (go 10:45, cash, communal tables, worth every minute) as its institution.
Craft notes. Morning light threads the moss east-west; golden hour runs it gold. The squares' benches are the pacing mechanism — one sit per three squares sustains the whole walk. Mind the trust-lot churches' open doors (the cathedral's entry is this guide's own chapter; Mickve Israel and the Independent Presbyterian's wedding-cake spire reward peeks). Photograph ironwork in side light, facades in flat light, canopies against noon sun. And walk it twice if the trip allows — once learning, once knowing — because the grid's genius is that familiarity deepens rather than spends it.