Two of the most influential ministers of the Great Awakening, John Wesley and George Whitefield, served as Anglican ministers in the early Georgia colony. Both left legacies considered worthy of commemoration by Savannah’s city council a century later. Wesley Ward was another of the three “final” wards to be named and laid out following the Trustee-era formula in 1851, though very little building occurred here until the late nineteenth century and only one antebellum house survives. Impeding the development of Wesley Ward was the Negro Burial Ground, a 300 × 650–foot fenced cemetery established by the City in 1813 in this part of the common. As with the white Church Burial Ground, the Negro Burial Ground was closed in 1852 and the internments relocated to the newly established Laurel Grove Cemetery (11.9), a gruesome task that was still not completed by 1855. Victorian-era wooden houses, most with ground-floor entrances and full-width front porches, confer on this ward an aura of domesticity and intimacy not found in most of the other squares. Those at 405–419 E. Gordon Street were erected by the Home Building Company and the Workman and Traders Loan and Building Association. Despite its domestic quality, the square has been home to large-scale medical facilities since its founding. The most notable was St. Joseph’s Hospital, which occupied the northwest tything until it was replaced by a twelve-story housing block.
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