The site of the colonial governor’s house, the Telfair family home was the most restrained design of the four mansions in Savannah designed by Jay. Alexander Telfair commissioned the house to accommodate himself, his wife, his mother, and his three unmarried sisters. The simple exterior, dominated by a one-story Corinthian portico and the thermal window above, offers little hint of the dramatic interior spaces of various geometric shapes and a double-height central hall.
Mary Telfair bequeathed the house and its contents to the Georgia Historical Society for the establishment of an art museum, founded in 1883 and opened in 1886, making it one of the oldest in the country and the first in the South. German-born Lienau transformed the house into a museum, adding a parapet to the exterior to accommodate the inscription, which reads “Telfair Academy of Arts & Sciences,” flanked by relief portraits of Aristotle and Alexander von Humboldt (removed after 1975) and, to the rear, a semidetached Beaux-Arts classical pavilion lavishly decorated with colossal pilasters and a highly sculpted cornice that contrast the simplicity of the original house. Construction was supervised by fellow German immigrant and local designer Augustus Schwaab. Lienau altered Jay’s design most significantly in the central hall, removing decorative pendentives and replacing the original double flight of stairs with his marble stairs located farther from the entrance. The rear wing includes a large sculpture gallery, which retains now-rare full-scale plaster copies of famous ancient sculptures, and the “rotunda” above, a grand square room with a tall coved ceiling. As part of the transformation, the museum’s first director, Carl Brandt, commissioned Viennese sculptor Viktor Tilgner to carve the five statues that front the building (installed 1884). In the 1940s numerous neoclassical architectural fragments, including mantles and interior wood doorframes, from the Mackay House (125 E. Congress St., c. 1757; demolished c. 1940) were incorporated into the rear portion of the building, originally used for classrooms and now housing offices. The building was restored to its orignal yellow in 2016.