Beginning in the 1840s, lots on what is now Bluff Drive, facing Skidaway Narrows, were sold to prominent families who built large houses along the water as summer retreats. An 1875 map reveals thirteen large lots along the bluff as well as smaller farms, with five larger lots on the eastern curve of the Narrows. Stately mansions now sit under enormous live oak trees facing across Bluff Drive to a river crowded with docks. This neoclassical house now occupies just over two acres of the plantation of colony founder Henry Parker. Whitehall was built in 1850 by his great-grandson, William Parker White, on the foundations of the original 1750 raised coastal cottage that burned just before the American Revolution. Two colossal Ionic columns frame a sweeping brick entrance staircase and two pairs of columns anchor the ends of the two-story porch. In 1874, Confederate major C. S. Hardee purchased the property, and Savannah mayor Wallace J. Pierpont bought the house in 1920 and renovated it. Successive owners have retained its neoclassical facade overlooking the Skidaway River, but repeatedly modernized and added to the house, which now encompasses more than ten thousand square feet.