#82: Smithfield Cottage and SCAD’s Preservation of Savannah
“Some people collect antique furniture.
At SCAD, we collect antique buildings.”
—Paula Wallace
Smithfield Cottage and SCAD’s Preservation of Savannah
The first Savannah construction project completed by the Atlanta design team of Alfred S. Eichberg and Calvin Fay was the Telfair Hospital for Females (see PFS #81) in 1886. The partnership between the two talents established a Savannah office in 1887. The two men were soon working together on several important design and construction projects in Savannah.
I’ll be getting over to paint their ‘Red Building,’ a significant office complex they designed for the Central of Georgia Railroad in 1888 — now SCAD’s Clark Hall — located on Martin Luther King Boulevard.
In 2010, my senior year at SCAD, one of my art exhibitions was held at Smithfield Cottage. I’ve painted it for the first time here en Plein air. It’s a beautiful and romantic place. Those wonderful personal memories contained within it from my college days will always retain its warm place in my heart.
The cottage still contains many of its original design elements, including some impressive stained-glass windows. Arthur Smith, a local antique dealer, had kept this home in pristine condition for many years. In 2004, he sold his home to SCAD, which adopted the Smithfield Cottage name in his honor — another fabulous addition to the many historic preservations the college completed since its founding.
In 1888, Eichberg and Fay designed this home for a Savannah business mogul named Jesse Parker Williams. ‘JP,’ as Williams went by, had arrived in Savannah in 1879 to work in the cotton trade.
JP later gained entry into the grocery store business and later successfully acquired enormous timberland tracts to produce massive volumes of lumber. Williams went on to help build the Georgia, Florida & Alabama Railroad. In short order, J.P Williams, who started with nothing in Savannah, became one of the richest men in Georgia. His home was the first in the state to include air conditioning.
Savannah was undoubtedly a city designed by white men, beginning, quite naturally, with its founder, James E. Oglethorpe. It is important to remember that from its beginnings Savannah was also a city primarily built with African slave labor, as well.
Yes, slavery was illegal from Savannah’s inception. Still, African slave labor from South Carolina, just a short distance across the Savannah River, was often deployed to build the city. As Mills Lane recounts in Savannah Revisited: History & Architecture (2001): “Twenty pairs of sawyers and twenty slaves from South Carolina came to aid the first building on the sandy bluff of the Savannah River.”
It is also vital to remember that Savannah was essentially ‘saved’ and then ‘preserved’ by its women.
In 1955, seven busy ladies organized the Historic Savannah Foundation: Mrs. Frank McIntyre, Mrs. Anna Hunter, Mrs. Reuben Clark, Mrs. Louis Roos, Mrs. Sam Adler, Miss Jane Wright, and Mrs. R.C. Roebling. The group’s first project was preserving the Isaiah Davenport House (see PFS # 30) from demolition.
So many of the paintings included in my Postcards from Savannah series include unique stories of buildings preserved for our enjoyment today. Of course, one essential woman involved in preserving historic Savannah architecture over the past four decades has been SCAD-founder Paula Wallace.
SCAD has rehabilitated nearly one hundred historic buildings. A detailed 360-page coffee-table book, SCAD: The Architecture of a University (2017), has documented SCAD’s significant and unique historic architectural conservation, preservation, and restoration efforts, spanning its four-decade existence.
