The Complexity of Layers
Posted on | December 18, 2009 | No Comments
By Scott Boylston
Images from "The Sou'easter" April 15th, 1943. The title reads "Shipbuilders Like Tattnall Homes," the original name for the built environment that is now Strathmore Estates. Photo courtesy of Patricia Jenkins.
Faux clapboard siding made from PVC…on top of asbestos panels…on top of cedar shingles…on top of heartpine studs. These physical layers tell us something of a building’s past. But while they are similar to the growth rings of a tree in their documentation of past conditions— and while something of the technological savvy and sociological values of those who built and lived within them can be gleaned from these layers by the astute observer—we must rely on other historical artifacts to comprehend time’s continuum in a more holistic fashion.
An announcement in the Savannah Evening Press about the Tattnall Homes, Sept. 20th, 1942. The entire upperleft section portrayed here was demolished in 1993 to make way for a high school. The section on the right is the present Strathmore Estates—home to a motherlode of heartpine waiting to be reclaimed!
The preceding post presented some photographs from Savannah Gardens/Strathmore Estates’ recent past; ethereal images of what was left behind by the last residents of this neighborhood. Those images define the waning of an era; a shift in human use of one particular spot on Earth. The contemporary detritus portrayed by the objects in those images is familiar to us; such things surround us all, and they are representative of what we ourselves possess. While the images reveal something of how the very last occupants of these buildings lived, however, they must not be seen as marking an end, as much as marking a transformation; a sudden transition that’s worthy of contemplation despite the unending stream of similar transitions.
The original construction of the Tattnall Homes, September, 1942. Photo courtesy of the Pine Gardens Neighborhood National Registry Project.
The images in this post capture an earlier but no less sudden transition; the transition from what once was, to what once became. This transition also marked the beginnings of the physical structuring of this place that we are familiar with today. The Josiah Tattnall Homes were completed in January, 1943 as war housing that was intended to be ‘demounted’ after World War II. Seven hundred and fifty units were built in the span of 5 months, and the site was named after Commodore Josiah Tattnall of the US Navy, who is credited for coining the phrase “blood is thicker than water,” by way of explaining his 1859 violation of US neutrality in coming to the aid of a British squadron under fire from Chinese forces in China. Josiah Tattnall was raised on his father’s plantation, Bonaventure, which is now Bonaventure Cemetery. The Tattnall Homes were built to house shipbuilders of the Southeastern Shipbuilding Corporation employed to build Liberty Ships for the war effort.
The nearly complete Tattnall Homes, October, 1942. Photo courtesy of Pine Gardens Neighborhood National Registry Project.
While the photographs here are less familiar to our understanding of life as we live it today, such images often speak more clearly to us; not necessarily more truthfully than the images in today’s newspaper, but arguably more clearly. They provide the benefit of distance. These images have the luxury of speaking to us through their symbolic representation of an era that is so far removed from the present day that we are spared the messy realities existing behind the singular and fleeting moments captured in these photographs. These realities had even passed into personal symbolism for the individuals portrayed in the images by the time the photographs made it to their initial publication.
The nearly complete Tattnall Homes, October, 1942. Photo courtesy of Pine Gardens Neighborhood National Registry Project.
For us, the photographs are merely puzzle pieces of a larger reality from which time has removed the majority of meaning. And rather than attempting to discern the essence of those missing pieces—an admittedly difficult, if not impossible, task—we are too often content to blend one available symbol smoothly into the next, despite the obvious distance between them, and take comfort in the belief that we can express the full extent of this era in a phrase or two; in an image or two. This contrived simplicity of the past, of course, can be refuted by any closer and more sincere inspection. One example of how the depictions of the shipbuilders’ idyllic living conditions presented in the opening photograph of this post can belie the broader reality can be found here.
The nearly complete Tattnall Homes, October, 1942. Photo courtesy of Pine Gardens Neighborhood National Registry Project.
How easy it is to say, then, that the 1940s in East Savannah were…
Photo courtesy of Pine Gardens Neighborhood National Registry Project.
So, these images represent the beginning of the Tattnall Homes, which soon became Strathmore Estates or, as so many know it, Savannah Gardens. They mark the beginnings of the physical spaces which will soon be radically transformed by the present redevelopment plans. In future posts, we hope to explore, among many other things, the history of this place before these spaces were created.
Emergent Structures is grateful for the help of local historians Charles Varner of the Pine Gardens Neighborhood National Registry Project, Martha Keber, author of Low Land and the High Road : Life and Community in HudsonHill, West Savannah, and Woodville Neighborhoods (as well as an upcoming book on East Savannah, of which Starthmore Estates is a part), and Patricia Jenkins. And we are especially appreciative of Michelle Hunter’s contributions. As Contract Coordinator for the City of Savannah’s Cultural Affairs Department, Michelle Hunter has long been engaged in devising creative strategies to coordinate, design, and manage neighborhood documentary projects in and around Savannah.
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