OurCoast.com :: Savannah City Guide

Courtesy of Best Read Guide

Johnson Square is notable for being the first square laid according to General James Oglethorpe's design, which today includes 21 preserved squares and the fragments of two others. Located on Bull Street between Bryan and Congress streets, Johnson Square is the center of Savannah's financial district and a setting for many civic and historic functions, including a reception for President James Monroe in 1819. The square is named for Robert Johnson, the Royal Governor of South Carolina at the time of Georgia's founding. General Oglethorpe named the square in the governor's honor for his invaluable assistance to the colonists in the first days of their settlement.

In the center of the square is an obelisk memorial to General Nathaniel Greene. General Greene was George Washington's second-in-command during the American Revolution and, in 1782, he was sent to Georgia to oversee its liberation from the British. Most of the city's Loyalists fled for the friendlier climes of England and five years and one week after the signing of the Declaration of Independence (which had first been read to Georgians in Johnson Square), American forces retook Savannah.

For his heroism in the Revolution, Greene was given nearby Mulberry Plantation, where, within a dozen years, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a device that transformed the South. Greene died prematurely in 1786 and was buried in Colonial Cemetery. His monument in Johnson Square was dedicated by the Marquis de Lafayette during his triumphant visit to Savannah in 1825 and Greene's remains were exhumed and re-interred beneath the monument in 1902. Christ Episcopal Church is located on the eastern side of the square. Known as Georgia's "Mother Church," it dates from its initial service on February 12, 1733, the day the first English settlers arrived on the high bluff above the river. Christ Episcopal stands on the site reserved by General Oglethorpe for the colony's first house of worship. Here, John Wesley, the subsequent founder of Methodism, began the American tradition of Sunday School. The current structure was built in 1838 and designed by James Hamilton Couper, a planter from St. Simons Island and a scholar in the field of tabby construction. The building resembles a Roman temple, with a simple portico supported by six Corinthian columns.

On the square is also a sundial dedicated to Colonel William Bull. Bull was a South Carolinian who came with Oglethorpe to find a suitable site for the new colony and it was he who suggested the city's current site, after Oglethorpe rejected Tybee Island as being too marshy. Bull also helped implement Oglethorpe's design for the city and Bull Street, the Historic District's east-west dividing line, was named for him as well.

Many thanks to Roulhac Toledano, author of The National Trust Guide to Savannah, to Ron Freeman, author of Savannah: People, Places, & Events, and to Preston Russell and Barbara Hines, authors of Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733. Their books can be purchased in stores throughout the Historic District.