The vision of Harvey Granger, president of the Chatham Land and Hotel Company that developed the neighborhood, Chatham Crescent was an early automobile suburb laid out at the same time and in coordination with Ardsley Park, but on a larger scale and with a more grandiose plan. The one-half-mile-square development is an example of the City Beautiful movement. Its grand symmetrical design features a broad pedestrian mall on Atlantic Avenue lined by palmetto trees as the central north-south axis leading to the prominent central building site, intended for a hotel but ultimately occupied by Savannah High School (14.6). A prominent crescent street with a median also leads to that site, its apex intersecting with Washington Avenue, a broad east-west street called 47th Street until 1932, also with a median, lined by three rows of majestic live oak trees. Each quadrant of the development centers on a circular park—effectively squares, but better suited to the movement of cars.
Chatham Crescent and Ardsley Park form a virtually seamless whole popularly known today as simply Ardsley Park. Their only visible distinction is the presence of tree lawns (grassy areas between sidewalks and streets) in Ardsley Park, whereas the sidewalks meet the curb in Chatham Crescent. Both developments include service lanes running east-west down the center of each block (continuing that feature from the Savannah plan) and extensive landscaping. The neighborhoods include numerous houses designed by prominent Savannah architects or by building contractor companies in all the fashionable styles of the early twentieth century, as well as many boldly individualistic variations on Craftsman houses and bungalows.