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Madison Square

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1839; 1986–1987 relandscaped, Clermont Lee

The square commemorates President James Madison, who died in 1836. To the south of the Jasper Monument (8.8), an 1848 city cistern cover (the oldest example in Savannah), emblazoned with an American eagle, marks the location of one of the brick cisterns installed in the city’s squares between 1833 and 1850, this one constructed by local contractor and mason Adam Short. A pair of bronze 1860s field cannon (Model 1857, 12-Pounder Napoleon) stands at the square’s southern edge; these were donated in 1920 by the Savannah Volunteer Guards to commemorate the starting points of Georgia’s first two highways, Augusta Road leading to Augusta and Ogeechee Road leading to Darien. From 1872 to 1879, a decorative earthen mound crowned by a Warwick Vase (modeled after the famous Warwick Vase discovered in 1771 at Hadrian’s Villa and eventually owned by George Grenville, the 2nd Earl of Warwick)—now in the garden of the adjacent Green-Meldrim House (8.5)—occupied the center of the square.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Robin B. Williams with David Gobel, Patrick Haughey, Daves Rossell, and Karl Schuler
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Data

What's Nearby

Sergeant William Jasper Monument
Eliza Jewett House
Scottish Rite Temple
Poetter Hall, SCAD (Savannah Volunteer Guards Armory)
Poetter Hall, SCAD

Citation

Robin B. Williams with David Gobel, Patrick Haughey, Daves Rossell, and Karl Schuler, "Madison Square", [Savannah, Georgia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/GA-02-8.7.

Print Source

Buildings of Savannah, Robin B. Williams. With David Gobel, Patrick Haughey, Daves Rossell, and Karl Schuler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016, 142-142.

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