Land on the north end of Tybee Island that would become Fort Screven was acquired in 1875 for a new Plan of 1870 fort that was never built. The tract adjoined an earlier Second System work—a Martello Tower built in 1814 (roughly four hundred feet north of Battery Brumby and now a sand-dune field)—and the Tybee Lighthouse Station (15.7). Construction of the Fort Screven fortifications began in 1897 as part of the new coastal defense system outlined by the Endicott Board on Fortifications in 1885 and updated by the Taft Board in 1905. The Endicott system employed isolated concrete batteries faced with earthen berms that mounted a variety of modern breechloading guns. The batteries are noteworthy for their early large-scale use of reinforced concrete. The berms were landscaped to obscure their location when viewed from the sea, and some batteries employed “disappearing carriages” to hide guns when they were not being fired. Living quarters were no longer placed within the fortifications but dispersed among other service buildings in the military compound. The fort was deactivated in 1944, sold a year later to the City of Savannah Beach, and auctioned to developers in 1946. Over time, some buildings were demolished, others moved, and still others added, obscuring the fort’s original appearance. The various support buildings of Fort Screven are generally standardized designs employed throughout army installations, mostly constructed between 1900 and 1910.