Scottish poet and essayist Alexander Smith once said, “Trees are your best antiques.” That sentiment rings true in Savannah, a city characterized by her avenues and squares lined in stately, hundred years old oaks. Our trees are as antique as our buildings, our city plan, our legacy.
So when it came time for the City to landscape the newly renovated Ellis Square, they had to consider the competition: majestic, centuries-old hardwood canopies mere blocks away. To keep in step with that glorious aesthetic (and the ambitious nature of the Ellis Square project as a whole), the decision was made to import mature oaks to help populate the park.
Photograph by Steve Bisson, Savannah Morning News
The tree-relocation project became somewhat more symbiotic given that five trees along the Truman Parkway, each about 30 feet tall, had hampered maintenance of a drainage canal. Those five trees are being planted yesterday alongside two older oaks and eight younger to complete the canopy of Ellis Square.
What was the past has now become the future.
No, no Michael J. Fox time-machine DeLorean DMC-12 here. BUT, our great friends over at the Georgia Historical Society (GHS) have given their old website a facelift. Times ten.
In an effort to beef up and streamline public access to their historical resource treasure trove, GHS got together with the gang at Smack Dab Studios to overhaul their (yes, “historic”) website.
Overall, we dig the whole juxtaposition-of-past-and-future thing. It’s part of what makes Savannah cool. (Plus, it reminds me of one of my favorite old-school TCCa-flavored collateral fortune cookie fortunes: “I see a historic future in your present.”)
So, the result of this transformation? Georgia history being brought to life (ala Frankenstein but much more attractive).
Yea, we know the folks at Smack Dab, and they’re good, creative peeps. So it’s no wonder that the website looks so good and is chocked full of new cool features that make it both user-friendly on the front end and easy to maintain and update on the back end. We’re talking an upgrade from FrontPage 98 (collective MOAN) to a Ruby on Rails‘ custom CMS (Content Management System).
TCCa knows that a community’s history is vital to it’s future; one builds off the other. Savannah is a bustling, creative community because of it’s solid foundation of heritage and tenacity, the wealth of culture, and the defining spirit of it’s people. Thankfully we have community leaders, citizens and a city that appreciates and embraces our rich past as we blaze down the road of today.
Once upon a time in Savannah’s not-too-distant past, the Westside was a pronouncedly active, desirable place to live. Blacks and whites alike worked nearby for manufacturers, the sugar refinery, the port and the railways.
When the City of Savannah set about rehabilitating the now depressed area (with extensive redevelopment projects such as Sustainable Fellwood) they wanted to approach plans with ambition, sensitivity and community involvement. It was at this impetus that Low Land and the High Road was commissioned to recognize the social institutions that were once the foundation of Savannah’s Westside.
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