This ward is named after William Harris Crawford (1772–1834), a U.S. senator, cabinet member under two presidents, and foreign diplomat. Laid out between 1841 and 1847, Crawford Ward is an anomaly in the historic district’s systematic pattern of streets, blocks, and squares and, like Brown Ward, has more blocks than a conventional Savannah plan ward. In order to accommodate the anomalous Colonial Park Cemetery (6.21), it covers an area equivalent to two and a half times the typical Savannah ward, stretching from Abercorn Street to East Broad Street. With several vacant lots, strip mall-type retail development, and a few recent row houses, Crawford Ward seems less intact than most of the others, but historic maps suggest that it has always been more random in its urban texture than the central wards. It never seems to have attracted grand or high-style residences, and the maps record numerous vacant properties, many small residences (some called “shanties” by the 1880s), brothels (at least forty-two in this area by 1916), and industrial areas, including the entire southwest tything lot. The ward was fairly described as a ghetto by Lou Rivers, who grew up in this neighborhood, in his memoir Remembering Crawford Square (2005).
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