A builder’s showcase
Isaiah Davenport completed his house on Columbia Square in 1820, in the Federal style. As a master builder, he designed it as a family home and as a demonstration of what he and his crew could do.
The people who lived here
The household included Davenport, his wife Sarah, their seven children and nine enslaved people. The museum’s Urban Enslaved exhibition is one way to learn about the lives of the enslaved people of the city.
A rescue in 1955
After more than a century as a boarding house, a family home and a rooming house, the house was threatened with demolition in 1955. A group of citizens bought it, the first act of the Historic Savannah Foundation, and it opened as a museum in 1963.
