Drainage and transportation projects facilitated the development of Savannah’s eastside neighborhoods. Recurrent yellow fever outbreaks compelled the City to dig the Bilbo Canal in 1874, which drained former marshlands and permitted building on the land. Jacob S. Collins established the Peoples Line electric streetcar along Gwinnett and Bolton streets, making these streets the spines for his speculative development, with Collinsville established in 1891 and the Meadows in 1900. Here, eclectic Italianate and Queen Anne houses feature broad front porches, complex massing and roofs, and towers, making the neighborhoods attractive to middle-class whites. As development continued, such common house forms as foursquares, cottages, bungalows, and 1950s ranch houses filled the area.
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