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Green-Meldrim House (Charles Green House)

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1853, John S. Norris. 14 W. Macon St.

Serving as the parish house and rectory of St. John’s since 1943, this rare example of Gothic Revival domestic architecture in Savannah features exquisite ornamental details both inside and out. The main house is a two-story rectangular block wrapped on three sides by an ornate ironwork porch and sits about twenty-five feet back from the “front” edge of the trust lot to accommodate a formal garden protected by an iron fence (with a Warwick Vase that was originally in Madison Square; 8.7). This garden was restored with a new planting plan in the “style of 1855–1861” by Clermont Lee in 1978. A service wing extends from the main house along the northwestern edge of the property. The front entrance, a canopied cast-iron Gothic Revival pavilion with an oriel window above, eschews the trust-lot norm for mansions by facing Macon Street, which was closed and converted by the church into a formal garden (1960–1961, Clermont Lee). Green was an English cotton trader whose most noteworthy deed was to offer his house to General William Tecumseh Sherman for use as headquarters during the Union occupation of the city in the winter of 1864–1865; meetings with leaders of local African American churches here resulted in Sherman’s Field Order No. 15, which famously promised each freed family forty acres.

Writing Credits

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

Robin B. Williams with David Gobel, Patrick Haughey, Daves Rossell, and Karl Schuler, "Green-Meldrim House (Charles Green House)", [Savannah, Georgia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/GA-02-8.5.

Print Source

Buildings of Savannah, Robin B. Williams. With David Gobel, Patrick Haughey, Daves Rossell, and Karl Schuler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016, 140-141.

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