Southside Along Abercorn, Hunter Army Air Base, and Armstrong State University

By the 1950s, when Derenne Avenue was the southern boundary of Savannah, the area to the south and east of White-bluff Road (the extension of Bull Street south of Derenne) was mostly pastureland or small farms with more than sixty small dairies. Since 1953, this rural setting has been replaced by office parks, large malls, subdivisions, roadside architecture, big box stores, fast-food restaurants, parking lots, and car dealerships. Most of Chatham County’s population lives, shops, and works in this large, formerly agricultural region and here, within the unique constraints of its multiple waterways and marshes, Savannah becomes much more typical of postwar American urban sprawl. Yet despite its typical and arguably banal suburban architectural character, this is also the region where the history of urban development reveals much of Savannah’s hidden poverty and the city’s economic diversity, ranging from pawnshops, payday-loan shops, gun stores, and gold buyers to grocery stores, ethnic restaurants, auto mechanics, and other vital small businesses and services. Southside is also a place where people can find affordable housing, since gentrification downtown and in the historic inner suburban neighborhoods has created a city that is unaffordable for many of its economically disadvantaged citizens. Indeed, while we may lament the loss of the rural character or its lack of formal historicism, Southside is not only an important part of Savannah’s history of growth in the postwar era, but is also essential for the current residents of the city and county and functions as a vital part of a complete city.