Since the founding of Savannah in 1733, Broughton Street has served as the principal commercial corridor of the downtown area, a remarkable fact given how frequently commercial districts migrate in cities. Of the original three major east-west streets defining the edges of the two rows of wards of the colonial town (Bay, Broughton, and South Broad), it alone had buildings fronting both sides. The street was named in honor of South Carolina governor Thomas Broughton. Although downtown Savannah is laid out in wards centered on squares, Broughton Street exhibits the way certain streets form linear corridors between the wards. It played a prominent role in the American Revolution as the site of the city’s first Liberty Pole, erected in front of Tondee’s Tavern on the northwest corner with Whitaker Street.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the blocks west of Lincoln Street and especially the blocks closest to the market in Ellis Square were predominantly commercial, while the blocks east remained largely residential. In 1882 Broughton Street became the city’s first street to be electrified. After World War II, many owners sought to modernize their shops by covering their historic facades with simple, often blank, modernist fronts, allowing signage to become the focal point of the design. Those same years witnessed a trend of retailers shifting their establishments to locations farther south in the city, beginning in 1946 with Sears and Roebuck (10.13) on Henry Street. The 1969 opening of Oglethorpe Mall, five miles south of downtown, attracted businesses away from Broughton Street, which gradually declined. By the early 1970s, the section of Broughton east of Lincoln was dominated by auto dealerships (some of which remain), repair shops, and parking lots.
The revitalization of downtown Savannah since beginning in the 1980s prompted several building owners to restore the historic store fronts, especially in the western blocks of the street, a process that is ongoing. One consequence of the revitalization has been the displacement of small-scale local retail establishments by national franchises. Taken as a group, the commercial buildings along Broughton Street, ranging from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, remain one of the most intact main street corridors in Georgia.
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