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Reynolds Square (Savannah, Georgia)

1734 establishments in the Thirteen ColoniesReynolds Square, Savannah
Planters Inn on Reynolds Square, 29 Abercorn Street (1913)
Planters Inn on Reynolds Square, 29 Abercorn Street (1913)

Reynolds Square is one of the 22 squares of Savannah, Georgia, United States. It is located in the northernmost row of the city's five rows of squares, on Abercorn Street and East St. Julian Street. It is east of Johnson Square, west of Warren Square and north of Oglethorpe Square. The oldest building on the square is The Olde Pink House (originally Habersham House), which dates to 1771.Originally called Lower New Square (due to its being the first one laid out, in 1734, after the original four), it was later renamed for Captain John Reynolds, governor of Georgia in the mid-1750s. Reynolds was, in fact, an unpopular governor, and it is said that the celebration held upon his arrival in the colony was rivaled only by that held upon his departure.The square contains a bronze statue, by Marshall Daugherty, honoring John Wesley, founder of Methodism. Wesley spent most of his life in England but undertook a mission to Savannah (1735–1738), during which time he founded the first Sunday school in America. The statue was installed in 1969 on the spot where Wesley's home is believed to have stood. The statue is intended to show Wesley preaching out-of-doors as he did when leading services for Native Americans, a practice which angered church elders who believed that the Gospel should only be preached inside the church building. Scultpor Marshall said: "The moment is as he looks up from his Bible toward his congregation, about to speak and stretching out his right hand in love, invitation, and exhortation. In contrast, the hand holding the Bible is intense and powerful – the point of contact with the Almighty."Reynolds Square was the site of the Filature, which housed silkworms as part of an early—and unsuccessful—attempt to establish a silk industry in the Georgia colony.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Reynolds Square (Savannah, Georgia) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Reynolds Square (Savannah, Georgia)
East Congress Street, Savannah Savannah Historic District

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N 32.0793 ° E -81.0892 °
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John Wesley

East Congress Street
31412 Savannah, Savannah Historic District
Georgia, United States
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Planters Inn on Reynolds Square, 29 Abercorn Street (1913)
Planters Inn on Reynolds Square, 29 Abercorn Street (1913)
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Savannah Protest Movement

The Savannah Protest Movement was an American campaign led by civil rights activists to bring an end to the system of racial segregation in Savannah, Georgia. The movement began in 1960 and ended in 1963. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, African Americans in Savannah were subject to Jim Crow laws that enforced a strict system of racial segregation whereby they were not allowed to use many of the same facilities used by white people. However, African Americans attempted to push back against this system, and by the 1940s, the NAACP, under the leadership of Ralph Mark Gilbert, organized voter registration drives among the black population and negotiated agreements with moderate city officials to secure certain improvements for the community, including the hiring of African American police officers and greater investment in infrastructure, such as road repairs and the creation of a new high school. By the early 1960s, W. W. Law had become the president of the local NAACP chapter, with Hosea Williams serving as vice president and head of the local youth council. On March 16, 1960, the movement began with a series of sit-ins conducted by several dozen student activists at segregated lunch counters throughout downtown Savannah, resulting in the arrest of three protestors at Levy's Department Store. Over the next several months, protestors continued to target segregated facilities with sit-in related protests, in addition to marches, pickets, and other forms of direct action. Additionally, Williams organized the Chatham County Crusade for Voters to mobilize the city's black voting bloc to push for change from the city government. By October 1961, a partial agreement was reached to desegregate some facilities in the city, though protesting continued to achieve complete desegregation. By mid-1963, Williams, who by this time had become affiliated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), began to hold nighttime marches that saw hundreds of arrests and an instance of rioting that resulted in the burning of at least one building and the mobilization of the Georgia National Guard. Following this, white businessmen in the city agreed to a full desegregation of the city and the city government, under Mayor Malcolm Roderick Maclean, agreed to rescind all remaining segregation ordinances. This officially came into effect on October 1, bringing an end to the movement. The Savannah movement is notable among protests of the civil rights movement for its length, its achievement of full desegregation, and for the general lack of violence when compared to other movements, such as the Birmingham campaign. Following the movement, Williams left Savannah to become a member of the SCLC national board, where he led a nationwide voter registration program during the 1960s. Meanwhile, in Savannah, Law served as NAACP local president until retiring in 1976. In 2016, the Georgia Historical Society installed a Georgia historical marker to commemorate the protest movement at the site of the former Levy's Department Store.

The Marshall House (Savannah, Georgia)
The Marshall House (Savannah, Georgia)

The Marshall House is a historic building in Savannah, Georgia, United States. It was opened in 1852 by Mary Magdalene Marshall as one of Savannah's first hotels (although it was built thirty years after the City Hotel, the city's first). Located on East Broughton Street, it is the city's oldest operating hotel today, owned by Savannah's HLC Hotels, Inc., which also owns the city's Olde Harbour Inn, the Eliza Thompson House, the East Bay Inn, the Gastonian and the Kehoe House. The building was occupied by the Union Army in 1864 and 1865 during the American Civil War.Ralph Meldrim was proprietor of the Marshall House in 1857, and he erected a 12-foot-high iron veranda on the front of the second floor of the property.A decade later, the Marshall Hose Company, a volunteer fire department, was founded to protect the property, and others, in Savannah.The Florida House, an adjoining property, became part of the Marshall House in 1880.The hotel closed between 1895 and 1899. When it reopened, electric lights and hot and cold plumbing was installed on every floor. Joel Chandler Harris, author of the Uncle Remus series, was a resident at the property around this time.Mary Marshall's estate collected rent on the property until 1914.In 1933, Herbert W. Gilbert, a Jacksonville native, leased the building and changed its name to the Gilbert Hotel.Gilbert sold the hotel in 1941, at which point it had a lobby, dining room, living room, reading room, 66 guest rooms, one suite, an apartment and six storage rooms.The property was named the Geiger Hotel for a period.The Marshall House closed in 1957 due to an economic downturn. The upper three floors were abandoned, but the ground floor was used by shopkeepers up until 1998. The building was restored the following year and reopened to the public as Savannah's oldest hotel.Original parts of the building include the Philadelphia pressed brick on the exterior, the Savannah grey brick throughout, its staircases, wooden floors, fireplaces and the doors to each guest room. Several claw-foot baths date to 1880. The veranda and gas lights were reproduced in the likeness of the originals.An 1830 portrait of Mary Marshall, who died in 1877 at the age of 93, is hanging in the lobby after it was acquired from the estate of Jim Williams, the central figure in John Berendt's non-fiction novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.The hotel has a reputation of being haunted.