“To walk down Jones Street on a soft summer evening is to come as close  

as one can to taking a stroll back in time to antebellum Savannah."   

—Barry Sheehy & Cindy Wallace (Savannah: Immortal City—2011) 

The Noah Knapp House: Living a Lovely Life on Jones Street 

Without a doubt, Jones Street is a top contender for winning the prize of 'Prettiest Street in Savannah.' 

Like the Alexander Smets House (see PFS-107), several homes on or near Jones Street were built by John Norris, one of Savannah's most famous architects of the day. 

Jones Street runs east to west and is located at the exact middle point between eight of Savannah's most beautiful squares, including Pulaski, Madison, Lafayette, and Troup Squares to the north, and then Chatham, Monterrey, Calhoun, and Whitefield Squares to the south.  

Throughout the Historic District of Savannah, street addresses separate from east to west at Bull Street. The John Norris designed Alexander Smets House is found at 2-4 West Jones Street, while the Noah B. Knapp House (painted en Plein air here) was built by Norris closer to Bull Street at 10 West Jones Street. 

The Noah B. Knapp Home was completed in 1857. Mr. Knapp was a successful leather goods merchant and saddle maker, owning a store once located nearby my art gallery in the Savannah City Market. 

Knapp's advertisements in the Savannah Morning News featured saddles, bridles, harnesses, carpet bags, trunks, and carriage trimmings made of French and American calf skins. Customers were directed to the West End Gibbons Building and told to locate the store under the sign of The Golden Saddler. 

The interior of the Knapp House deployed the typical layout of its day, with family quarters found on its upper floors while quarters for servants and the enslaved were located on the ground floor. 

It is important to remember that most of the Savannah homes of this era were constructed by enslaved men and maintained by enslaved women. The lifestyle of the fortunate wealthy among Savannah's small yet powerful elite before the Civil War was entirely dependent upon enslaved labor.  

At the American Civil War outbreak, Savannah was the largest city in Georgia and had the highest concentration of enslaved families, with fully one-third of the city's population held in bondage. 

The dark side of the 'lovely lives' once found on Jones Street includes the essential story of African slavery in Savannah. Most historical narratives feature slavery in a plantation setting. But urban slavery was central to the slave-based economy rooted in Southern cities like Savannah. 

As I have mentioned more than once while painting this series of Postcards from Savannah (see PFS-13), Leslie M. Harris and Daina Ramey Berry have documented the city life of the enslaved with a detailed collection of essays found in their enlightening book: Slavery and Freedom in Savannah (2014). 

The Harris & Berry book is essential reading for students of American history wishing to understand the day-to-day activities of the wealthy and the enslaved living in antebellum Southern cities like Savannah. 

The lifestyles of the wealthy were utterly dependent upon the people their families enslaved. At the same time, the arrangements of living quarters within a city required slave-holders and the enslaved persons they owned to live in very close proximity to one another. 

The luxurious lifestyles of Savannah's rich and famous antebellum elites required the sparse living of the enslaved and poor free laborers, both Black and white. It is a central theme of Savannah's true story.