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1816
William Jay drew the plans in England before he reached Savannah
The house was begun in 1816 and completed in 1819. The English architect William Jay of Bath drew the plans while still in England and sent elevations to local workers. He arrived in Savannah sometime after the foundations were laid. His letters say the house was to be compatible with Bath, as its Bath stone shows. It was first known as the Richardson House, after its first owner and builder, Richard Richardson.
1825
Lafayette addressed Savannah from the cast iron veranda in 1825
The house has an early cast iron side veranda with elaborate acanthus scroll supports. On it the Marquis de Lafayette addressed the citizens of Savannah on his visit in 1825. The mansion was bought in 1830 by George Welshman Owens, a local attorney and politician, and his family kept it for several decades.
1951
Margaret Thomas left the house to the Telfair Academy in 1951
Owens's granddaughter, Margaret Thomas, bequeathed the house in 1951 to the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, established in 1885 as the South's oldest art museum. Telfair Museums was the first public art museum in the Southern United States, founded through the bequest of Mary Telfair. It now holds over 4,500 works in three buildings, and this house is one of them.
The quarters
A 1990s renovation uncovered a well preserved urban slave quarters
During a renovation of the carriage house in the 1990s, the owners found one of the oldest and best preserved urban slave quarters in the American South. The enslaved workers who lived there included the nanny, cook and butler. The ceiling is painted haint blue, which Gullah culture customarily used to deter ghosts or other malevolent spirits. It is the largest swath of haint blue paint in North America.
Day 2, afternoon
It comes after Wormsloe Historic Site. Then Chippewa Square.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Owens–Thomas House and the Wikipedia article Telfair Museums, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.