27 Abercorn St
Savannah, GA 31401, USA

Oliver Sturges House - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

I. 1735-1812: Christ Church Vestry, John Wesley Lot "T”, Southwest trust lot of Reynolds Ward was the site set aside by the Trustees of the Colony of Georgia for the home of the minister at Savannah. A house on this site shows in the 1733 Peter Gordon Map. During the years 1736 and 1737 John Wesley, minister of the Church of England and later the founder of Methodism lived here. In 1969 the Methodists and the Citizens of Savannah erected a status of John Wesley in the center of Reynolds Square and renovated the square at that time.

II. 1812-1911: Oliver Sturges, Benjamin Burroughs. Reynolds Square was the center of Colonial Government with the House of Assembly standing on the Southeast trust lot. It was in this building and square that the first and second readings on the Declaration of Independence in Savannah took place.
The Northwest trust Lot "R" was the site of the public school in 1756. About 1789 a private residence was built for James Habersham, Jr. It later became the Planter's Bank; the square then being known as "Bank Square." The house still stands today together with the Sturges House the only two remaining houses of this fashionable residential district.

The filature (house for reeling silk) was on Trust Lot "S" (North eastern one) until it burned in 1840. Cassel Row, a series of two-story brick houses, was built on the lot after that. This row was demolished to make way for the building now occupied by the U. S. Army Engineers. The filature was used for public meetings, balls, and for a time by city government until the city Exchange was erected.


Oliver Sturges and his partner Benjamin Burroughs purchased Trust Lot "T" from Christ Church Vestry in 1812. The next year together they constructed a fine pair of Georgian townhouses overlooking the square. Burroughs and Sturges were associate cotton merchants. To quote the Historic Savannah Survey, "It was from the parlor room of the Sturges House that plans were made for the crossing of the Atlantic by the S. S. Savannah." Oliver Sturges was a substantial financial participant in this first transatlantic steamship voyage venture in 1819.

Mr. William Harden, born in 1835 wrote in his memoirs that men of wealth planters and bankers, prominent citizens of Savannah lived around Reynolds Square. Mr. William P, Hunter lived many years in the Sturges House, Mr. Hunter was a distinguished Savannah Banker, and next to him was Mr. Joseph Hallett Burroughs whose wife was the daughter of the Hon. John Macpherson Berrien, Attorney General of the United States, 1829-1831.


The Burroughs family maintained their half of the pair until 191I when it was sold and subsequently tom down for a hotel. The Sturges House was a rooming house at that time.

In 1964 Historic Savannah Foundation, Inc., rescued the Sturges House from imminent demolition. The site of this house and lot is within the Savannah Historic District, a Registered National Historic Landmark, so designated by the Department of the Interior through the National Park Service Historic Savannah Foundation has placed legal protective covenants on the Sturges House regarding its future sale and appropriate restoration. These will insure the preservation of the integrity of the building.

The building has been open to the public during Georgia Day Celebrations for tours and was on tour for the National Trust for Historic Preservation Annual Conference held in Savannah in October, 1968.

Hiram Roberts House, 27 Abercorn St Savannah, Chatham County, GA

HABS GA-25