Atlanta
ATLANTA is a relatively young city: only incorporated in 1847, it
was little more than a minor transportation center until the Civil War,
when its accessibility made it a good site for the huge Confederacy
munitions industry and consequently a major target for the Union army.
In 1864 Sherman's army burned the city, an act immortalized in Gone with
the Wind . Recovery after the war took just a few years: Atlanta was the
archetype of the aggressive, urban, industrial ''New South,'' furiously
championed by '' boosters '' newspaper owners, bankers, politicians and
city leaders. Industrial giants who based themselves here included
Coca-Cola , source of a string of philanthropic gifts to the city.
Very few of Atlanta's buildings predate 1915, and nothing at all
survives from before 1868. Its characters, on the other hand politicians
and newspaper people have changed little, and the ''booster'' tradition
has continued to the present, peaking spectacularly when Atlanta won the
right to host the 1996 Olympics . The bid to convince the world of the
city's prosperity and sophistication was led by city leaders such as
ex-mayor Andrew Young (the first Southern black congressman since
Reconstruction, who became Carter's ambassador to the UN) and flamboyant
former CNN magnate Ted Turner .
Today's Atlanta is at first glance a large American city. Its population
has reached 3.5 million. The city is undeniably progressive, with little
interest in lamenting a lost Southern past. Since voting in the nation's
first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, in 1974, an estimated 200,000 black
families streamed in from states further north in the 1980s alone. With
its ever-increasing international profile, cosmopolitan blend of
cultures and hip local neighborhoods, the spirit and dynamism of modern
Atlanta is a far cry indeed from its much-mythologized Deep South roots.
The City
Atlanta's layout is confusing, following old Native American trails
rather than a logical grid system, with no fewer than 32 streets named "Peachtree";
take care to note whether you're looking for Avenue, Road, Boulevard and
so forth. The most important is Peachtree Street , which cuts a long
north-south swath through the city. Sights are scattered, but relatively
easy to reach on public transportation. Once you're there, the downtown
area, the Martin Luther King Jr Historic District ranged along Auburn
Avenue , and the trendy neighborhoods of Little Five Points and
Virginia-Highland are all easy to explore on foot.
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Brunswick
BRUNSWICK , the one sizeable settlement south of Savannah, is a hop-off
point for the offshore sea islands . It's not in itself very exciting,
although the shrimp docks can be quite interesting when the catch is
brought in. The wonderful Hostel in the Forest , reached via an
inconspicuous muddy driveway on the south side of US-82, is a couple of
miles west of I-95 exit 6 (tel 912/..., no reservations); it charges $15
per night for dorm beds in a geodesic dome and for lodging in a few
treehouses. In the unlikely event you'll need to stay in town, the
visitor center , 4 Glynn Ave (daily 8.30am-5pm; tel 912/265-0620), has
lists of budget motels and central B&Bs , such as the comfortable Rose
Manor Guest House , 1108 Richmond St (tel 912/267-6369; $75-100). The
best food nearby, in an unlikely setting next to a gas station at exit 6
on I-95, not far from the hostel, is at the superlative Georgia Pig (tel
912/264-6664), where luscious smoky barbecue comes with the local
Brunswick stew, coleslaw, honey-flavored baked beans and fragrant sauce.
The Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation , ten miles north of Brunswick on US-17,
gives a vivid idea of life under slavery (Tues-Sat 9am-5pm, Sun
2-5.30pm; $3.50). A good exhibit covers the rice cultivation that made
the planters so wealthy, and you can see the surprisingly modest
plantation house where their descendants lived until the 1970s.
Occasional gospel concerts are held here on summer Saturdays, with soul
food on sale.
Central Georgia
The broad expanse of central Georgia , south of Atlanta, is famous
more for its people than for places to see. Otis Redding, James Brown,
Little Richard and the Allman Brothers were all born here or grew up in
the area, while former president Jimmy Carter came from little Plains,
roughly 120 miles due south of the capital.
Few of its small towns hold much of interest, though vegetable fanatics
may enjoy tiny Juliette , twenty miles north of Macon, where the Whistle
Stop Café dishes up the fried green tomatoes of book and movie fame (Mon-Sat
8am-2pm, Sun noon-7pm), and Vidalia further east, the self-proclaimed "Sweet
Onion Capital of the World." The largest communities are the dull army
center of Columbus and the likeable town of Macon .
North from Atlanta: the mountains
Atlanta is a short drive from some spectacular Appalachian mountain
scenery , at its best in October when the leaves turn gold and red. A
drive through the mountains on the secondary roads takes you through
endless hairpins and narrow passes; Hwy-348 ascends a particularly
impressive pass at the White County line, crossed at the top by the
Appalachian Trail . Of the various towns and villages, Dahlonega makes
the best base; most of the rest - like Helen , 35 miles northeast, now a
pseudo-Bavarian village - are either kitsch or downright dull. The
region does, however, abound in delightful state parks , several of
which offer both camping and hotel-style lodges.
Okefenokee Swamp
The dense semitropical OKEFENOKEE SWAMP stretches over thirty miles
down to Florida from a point roughly thirty miles southwest of Brunswick.
Tucked away among its astonishing profusion of luxuriant plants and
trees are something like 20,000 alligators, over thirty species of snake,
as well as bears and pumas. You can only get in at the Okefenokee Swamp
Park , a private charity-owned concession at the northeast end, on Hwy-177,
off US-23/1, not served by public transportation (June-Aug daily
9am-6.30pm; Sept-May daily 9am-5.30pm; $14-18; tel 912/283-0583).
Admission includes an hour and a half boat tour through the swamp (slick
yourself with bug repellent), a serpentarium, a good interpretive center
on wildlife, an observation tower, reconstructed pioneer buildings - and
a lot of placid alligators sunning themselves in oblivious bliss.
Unlovely WAYCROSS , ten miles north, holds bargain motels such as the
Pinecrest , 1761 Memorial Drive (tel 912/283-3580; up to $35). The
town's Okefenokee Heritage Center , 1460 N Augusta Ave (Tues-Sun
9am-5pm; $4), has occasional displays on the history of the swamp.
Savannah
American towns don't come much nicer than SAVANNAH , seventeen miles
up the Savannah River from the ocean, on the border with South Carolina.
The appealing Historic District , ranged around Spanish-moss-swathed
squares, formed the core of the original city, and today boasts examples
of just about every architectural style of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, while the atmospheric cobbled waterfront on the Savannah
River , key to the postwar economy, is edged by towering old cotton
warehouses.
Savannah was founded in 1733 by James Oglethorpe as the first settlement
of the new British colony of Georgia. His intention was to establish a
haven for debtors, with no Catholics, lawyers or hard liquor, and above
all, no slaves. However, with the arrival of North Carolinan settlers in
the 1750s, the town became a major export center, at the end of
important railroad lines by which cotton was funneled from far away in
the South. Sherman arrived here in December 1864 at the end of his March
to the Sea; he offered the town to Abraham Lincoln as a Christmas gift,
but at Lincoln's urging left it intact and set to work apportioning land
to freed slaves. This was the first recognition of the need for ''reconstruction,''
though such concrete economic provision was rarely to occur again.
The plantations floundered after the Civil War; cotton prices slumped,
and Savannah went into decline. There was little industry beyond the
port, and as that fell into disuse and decay, so too did Savannah's
graceful townhouses and tree-lined boulevards. Not until the 1960s did
local citizens start to organize what has been, on the whole, the
successful restoration of their town recently, and tentatively, extended
to the predominantly Victorian District .
Savannah has acquired a new notoriety of late thanks to its starring
role in John Berendt's best-selling Midnight in the Garden of Good and
Evil ; For a sense of what goes on behind closed doors in the city, it's
an unbeatable read, and locals delight in making dark hints as to how
much they knew, or even did, themselves. If you want to look behind the
closed doors for yourself.
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The Town
Savannah's Historic District is flanked by the river, Martin Luther
King Jr Boulevard in the west and, to the east, Broad Street, the old
commercial main street and offices. Broughton Street has since become
the main thoroughfare of downtown Savannah. You can get an overview at
the Savannah History Museum , behind the visitor center, in the restored
Railroad Station at 303 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd (daily 9am-5pm; $3),
where an informative jaunt through Native American culture, colonial
development, the river and the Civil War is let down slightly by a slide
show that is less a history lesson than a hard-sell promotion of
Savannah's considerable charms. A block south, the Historic Railroad
Shops (daily 9am-4pm) is a worthwhile slice of industrial architecture.
The best way to get a feel for the place is simply to wander the "tabby"
streets - made from a kind of primitive concrete mashed up with oyster
shells - lined with shuttered Federal, Regency and antebellum houses
adorned with intricate iron balconies, and intriguing details such as
false "earthquake decorations." These sturdy iron rods embedded in the
walls served no purpose, but were placed there simply to keep up with
elegant South Carolina neighbor Charleston in architectural cachet.
Note, too, the preponderance of light blue houses, washed in buttermilk
and indigo to keep the ghosts away. The shady residential squares ,
ablaze with dogwood trees, azaleas and magnolias, offer peaceful respite
from the blistering summer heat. Forrest Gump told his life story from a
bench in Chippewa Square , but eager movie-buffs will find an imposing
statue of James Oglethorpe, and no such bench.
Most visitors take in one or two of Savannah's old mansions , such as
the English architect William Jay's neoclassical Regency style
Owen-Thomas House , 124 Abercorn St (tours Mon noon-5pm, Tues-Sat
10am-5pm, Sun 2-5pm; $8; tel 912/233-9743), or the redbrick Georgian
Davenport House , 324 E State St (Mon-Fri 10am-4.30pm, Sat 1pm-4.30pm;
$4; tel 912/236-8097). The latter, the first restoration project of the
Historic Savannah Foundation, is sparsely furnished but boasts a
wonderful elliptical staircase and delicate plasterwork. The Green-Meldrim
House , on Madison Square (Tues & Thurs-Sat 10am-4pm; $5; tel
912/232-1251), is a splendid Gothic Revival mansion with dramatic
ironwork, which General Sherman used as his headquarters. At the
southern edge of the Historic District, the Massie Heritage
Interpretation Center , 207 E Gordon St (Mon-Fri 9am-4pm; $3), is a
simple, effective museum illuminating Savannah's architecture with
displays on its neighborhoods and growth, and tracing influences from as
far away as London and Beijing. While you can't go inside, the Mercer
House on picturesque Monterey Square nearby is one of the grandest of
the city's mansions and featured prominently in "The Book." Also worth a
visit is another of Jay's Regency mansions, the Telfair Museum of Art ,
124 Abercorn St (Mon noon-5pm, Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; $8, Sundays
free; tel 912/232-1177), which also has the distinction of being the
oldest art museum in the South.
Though the Spanish moss of the city proper may be redolent of the Old
South, Savannah's waterfront area, at the foot of a steep little bluff
below Bay Street and reached by assorted stone staircases and
atmospheric alleyways, retains the look and feel of an eighteenth-century
European port. The main thoroughfare, River Street , is cobbled with the
ballast carried by long-vanished sailing ships, while its tall brick
cotton warehouses are said to be haunted by the ghosts of the slave
stevedores. It's now a lively commercial district, lined with seafood
restaurants and salty bars that heave with partying crowds on Saturday
nights; as certain businesses target themselves ever more directly
toward the "Spring Break" student crowd, however, some of its former
charm is being lost. Looking out over the water from the paved
Riverfront Plaza across the way you can appreciate just how busy the
port still is.
As the one-time point of entry for many of Georgia's slaves, Savannah
has a strong black history . The predominantly black Victorian District
, southeast of downtown, is being slowly restored, and has a couple of
good, if underfunded, museums. The nerve center of the restoration
process is the King-Tisdell Cottage , 514 E Huntingdon St, owned by a
middle-class black family c.1900 (Tues-Fri noon-4.30pm, Sat 1-4pm; $3;
tel 912/234-8000). In addition to a fine collection of gullah baskets
and African woodcarving, it illustrates the history of slaves and free
blacks before the Civil War, and of the freed slaves after,
commemorating Savannah's role as the site of Sherman's famous " Field
Order #15 ," which granted each freed slave forty acres and a mule. The
museum also operates excellent black heritage tours (leaving from the
visi-tor center, Mon-Sat 1pm & 3pm; $15; call a day in advance at
912/234-8000). The two-hour tours take in the Second African Baptist
Church , 123 Houston St, where Field Order #15 was signed; the poor
black Yamacraw neighborhood, now sadly run-down and depressed; and the
1777 First African Baptist Church , the oldest black church in North
America, built by slaves. This last, at 23 Montgomery St in the Historic
District, can also be visited independently (daily 10am-2pm). Note the
decorative carvings by the pews and diamond-shaped holes in the floor,
ventilation for slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Back in the
Victorian District, the airy Beach Institute , 502 E Harris St (Tues-Sat
noon-5pm; $3.50), Georgia's first school for freed slaves, today houses
an African-American art gallery with a permanent display of
extraordinary woodcarvings by folk artist Ulysses Davis.
A ten-minute drive east from Savannah will take you to the lovely
Bonaventure Cemetery (dusk to dawn), swathed in trees and sloping down
to the Wilmington River. The final resting place of luminaries such as
Johnny Mercer and Conrad Aiken, it's also a major sight in "The Book"
and written about there to great effect. Sylvia Shaw Judson's Bird Girl
statue, which graces the cover and used to be situated here, has since
been moved to the Telfair Museum of Art.
Sea islands
Several of Georgia's SEA ISLANDS , like those of South Carolina,
were divided among freed slaves after the Civil War. They remained poor,
agricultural communities, however, and little now remains from those
years for an outsider to see. Today they make handy alternatives to
Florida as seashore breaks for tired inlanders. |
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