Low Down and Beautiful

“Savannah or Charleston?” When readers ask me that, my answer has typically been “New Orleans,” as I’ve always loved the Crescent City and its stew of culture, cuisine, and ethnicity more than just about anyplace else in the South. Hurricane Katrina has rendered that answer irrelevant, at least temporarily, so I set out to come up with a more useful one.

Savannah and Charleston are akin to the ends of a barbell connected by South Carolina’s Lowcountry, the moniker a consequence of the area’s elevation. People often visit the three areas on three separate vacations, as they are distinct, different experiences, though all are portions of a larger whole. Their consistent themes are great food, wonderful history, evocative ambience, and perhaps America’s most pleasant springtime climate. Some differences: Savannah’s reputation is as more of a living, breathing city than Charleston, and it has not always been as preservation-oriented. It is less of a period piece and has become, intriguingly, a haven for young artists, ensuring that it will continue to thrive as a small metropolis. The Lowcountry is, in places, frightfully overdeveloped, and you must search for its Southern authenticity, but those willing to make a modicum of effort will find it in abundance.

My visit earlier this year encompassed just Savannah and its Lowcountry environs—here’s a primer on how to make the most of a long weekend or leisurely week.

SAVANNAH
At Savannah’s heart is its amazingly well-preserved grid of eighteenth-century pedestrian-oriented streets, knit together by twenty leafy park-like squares, each fronted by well-preserved period homes, churches, and civic buildings. James Edward Oglethorpe, the English general who founded Savannah in 1733, created the city’s plan, and it survives largely intact today. Savannah is as graceful and bucolic a small city as exists in the United States.

Savannah’s port brought it prominence initially and attracted a multi-ethnic populace, atypical of much of the South. The cotton economy boomed in the 1800s, creating much of the wealth on display in the city’s historic houses. Savannah surrendered to General Sherman in 1864 to save itself, but the decline of the cotton economy did what the Union did not, and turned it into a backwater—by WWII it was dilapidated and in jeopardy.

A 1955 fight to save a historic mansion birthed the Historic Savannah Foundation, and today, fifty years later, more than 1,000 buildings have been restored in the two-plus-square-mile Historic District. Though there are dozens of period homes to tour, a modest museum, and the restored port, the best days can be had strolling the historic areas, stopping where it suits you, drinking in the warm breezes, and feeling the rhythms of the place.

My favorite places are Oglethorpe’s many squares, each with a unique feel, most containing the so-called “live oak” trees, typically dripping Spanish moss. Don’t miss meandering from Johnson Square in the heart of the city’s business district, filled with downtown workers gabbing on cell phones, to Madison Square, surrounded by stylish shops and students of the city’s College of Art and Design, to Monterey Square, ringed by some of the city’s most historic structures, to modest Whitfield Square, bracketed by Victorian homes, with a gazebo in its center. Four of the city’s squares were destroyed in the name of urban progress when the city didn’t know any better, but the others are secure.