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The unique cityscape and character that have made Savannah a top-tier travel destination didn’t happen by accident.
More than 17 million people visited Savannah, Georgia, in 2023. The small port city on the Atlantic routinely appears on lists of world-class travel destinations thanks to its climate, natural beauty, and well-preserved downtown, laid out on a grid design that dates back to 1733.
Tourists take pictures under sprawling oaks in the same picturesque squares founder James Oglethorpe designed in the settlement’s earliest days. The neighborhood green spaces and gathering places have made Savannah a scenic, walkable destination.
But the city’s status as a tourist mecca would come as a surprise to anyone who lived there in the 1950s. Back then, everyone was fleeing.
The Historic Savannah Foundation was the axis of the city’s remarkable turnaround. The organization was one of the first groups in the country to establish a revolving fund to purchase, restore, and sell historic homes and landmarks. Today, it’s a model for historic preservation societies around the country, and their collective efforts have value beyond maintaining quaint charm.
Rehabilitating historic properties keeps demolition debris out of landfills and makes use of existing infrastructure, like water lines and sidewalks. The design features of historic homes — shade trees, for example, and ample porches and windows — naturally dovetail with today’s principles for sustainable construction and ventilation. The tenets of reusing and recycling apply as much to buildings as anything else.
In the wake of World War II, the American dream was a ranch house in the suburbs, complete with a two-car garage. Many families traded their downtown homes for spacious suburban lots. Landlords subdivided historic mansions into apartments, then left them to fall apart as the urban center decayed. Shopkeepers and companies joined the exodus, leaving behind boarded-up shops and offices.
All over town, people were looking for places to put cars. Gas stations sprung up, centuries-old buildings were flattened for parking lots, and the squares faced demolition to facilitate car traffic.
In 1935, the city razed three squares on Montgomery Street, a downtown thoroughfare, to make way for a road to the riverfront. In 1954, another — Ellis Square — became a parking garage. The next year, the 1820 Davenport House, occupied by Isaiah Davenport and his family in the 19th century, was slated for demolition to make way for — no surprise — a parking lot.
A group of seven local women launched a fierce campaign to save the structure. Their successful effort birthed the Historic Savannah Foundation and its revolving fund — and ultimately saved the Savannah we know today.
The revolving fund allows the foundation to buy and restore historic properties, then sell them with preservation easements in place that allow the foundation to monitor the property’s preservation over time. The revolving fund takes its name from the way each sale replenishes its resources; each home sold enables the foundation to do the same again.
Today, the foundation checks up on more than 400 of these properties each summer, and it’s looking to expand the revolving fund’s scope to include storefronts, as well as homes in underserved neighborhoods and outside the downtown historic district.
Neeley, who took the top job at the foundation last August, says the structure and history of the revolving fund attracted him to the job. “It’s a tool that so many organizations use and experiment with across the country to do preservation work, to do revitalization work, to really contribute to their local community.”
But one home the foundation didn’t sell was the Davenport House, which it operates as a museum that invites visitors into the 19th-century world of the home and its occupants, enslaved and free. It’s about “creating a third space where people can not just reflect on their history, but the history of the community,” foundation President and CEO Collier Neeley says. “They can interact with it and experience it in a tangible way but also have a place for memory, reflection, learning, and even social connection.”
The museum, along with the revolving fund, is part of a suite of efforts to keep Savannah’s past living and present. The foundation also studies the economic impact of preservation efforts, draws attention to historic properties in jeopardy, and celebrates successful restorations through annual awards.
As of late 2025, median home prices in downtown Savannah topped $843,000, and rents, too, are climbing. A study by CashNetUSA ranked Savannah the 20th least-affordable rental market in the country. Historic preservation efforts, which call to mind Victorian and Georgian mansions on acres of prime real estate, can be at odds with the need for more affordable urban housing, but the foundation is cognizant of the challenge.
“Our historic neighborhoods have this really rich, deep history but also need affordable housing opportunities and revitalization through sensitive development,” Neeley says, “both in renovations of the historic housing stock in these neighborhoods and also sensitive infill development, providing new homes that might fill vacant lots.”
Last year, the foundation partnered with the city to test an approach that served both goals and expanded the revolving fund beyond its traditional scope. The foundation used its revolving fund to purchase and rehabilitate a modest home in Cuyler-Brownville, a historically Black neighborhood on downtown Savannah’s western edge. Then, through the City of Savannah’s Dream Maker program, which provides down-payment assistance, a first-time homebuyer was able to purchase the property.
The foundation is assessing whether the partnership will be sustainable, but Neeley hopes it will become an avenue to reach first-time homebuyers who need affordable options and nontraditional financing, but are interested in living in and preserving a historic home.
Thanks to the collaboration and the revolving fund, “We’re able to work in neighborhoods that don’t necessarily have the same economic capacity as downtown’s Landmark District,” Neeley says, “but are still vital to Savannah’s history and to the Savannah story.”
Throughout its history, the foundation has tried to get Savannah residents to coalesce around a common vision and appreciation for historic preservation, a tactic that Neeley says makes his job easier, even as economic and development pressures mount. Homeowners and business people can recognize that maintaining the city’s history has helped it rake in billions annually. “We’re preserving our No. 1 product,” Neeley says, “which is our historic character.”
A program launched last year, Endangered Places, brings attention to at-risk historic sites. The idea is to identify buildings in danger with the hope of inspiring communities and property owners to preserve them and connecting them with the resources to do so.
It’s yielded success already: The congregation of Nicholsonboro Baptist Church, one of Savannah’s oldest Black congregations, has connected with a foundation member to restore and maintain the historic church.
In 1955, the Historic Savannah Foundation spearheaded a revolution, and in the seven decades since, it’s helped transform a blighted urban center into a national attraction and has preserved homes and landmarks across a spectrum of values and architectural styles. Now, Neeley says, “the professional sport here is historic preservation.”
Despite the economic pressure, the foundation looks set to succeed by anticipating challenges and uniting disparate groups behind a vision that looks forward by looking to the past.
So what will Savannah look like 70 years from now? If the foundation gets its way, not much different.
