Bulloch-Habersham House
229 Barnard Street, Orleans Square, Savannah, Georgia
Built in 1818, for Archibald Stobo Bulloch (1767-1830) and his wife, Sarah Glen (1775-1859). It was one of the four mansions built in Savannah by the young English Regency architect, William Jay (1792-1837). The house was filled with a large quantity of furniture that had been shipped to Bulloch in 1819 from the noted Parisian-born cabinet-maker based in New York, Charles-Honoré Lannuier (1779-1819). However, the Bullochs had barely settled in to their new home when the Great Savannah Fire of 1820 devastated Bulloch's fortune and in 1822 he was forced to sell the mansion....
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The white stucco mansion in the English Regency style that Jay designed for the Bullochs stood two stories over a basement. It was noted for its semi-circular entrance portico with six Corinthian columns modelled after the Temple of Vesta in Rome. The interior was described as follows in Classical Savannah by Page Talbott,
The house had a broad central hall with two 20-foot wide rooms on each side, a circular domed drawing room, a spiral staircase cantilevered within a circle of six Corinthian columns, unusual tripartite windows on the main floor, and a double drawing room with Corinthian and Ionic column screens. A figural mantel in the style of Richard Westmacott Jr., graced the north-east drawing room, and carved Egyptian masks were part of the decorative vocabulary.
In 1822, Bulloch sold the mansion for $19,000 to John Morel and David Leion. They transformed it into a boarding house as it remained until 1834 when it was purchased by the merchant and planter Robert Habersham (1783-1870) for just $7,000. After his death it passed to his son, William Neyle Habersham (1817-1899), the well-known connoisseur and dealer in Madeira wine. He died in 1899 and his heirs mainitained the house until 1905. Ten years later (1915), it was acquired by the City of Savannah for the purpose of demolishing it to build a municipal auditorium. It fell to the wrecking ball in 1918.
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Image from the Savannah Historical Society; Bulloch Mansion, SavannahAmbitions Blog; Classical Savannah: Fine & Decorative Arts, 1800-1840 (1995) by Page Talbott; Lost Savannah: Photographs from the Collection of the Georgia Historical Society (2003), by Luciana M. Spracher
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