8/5/2018

Weekly Update 8/5/2018

I experienced a wonderful day tour to Milledgeville, GA on Saturday. I went with Jane, Barbara and Kay. This planned capital city (one of only two, the other being Washington DC) took shape and was given the name Milledgeville in honor of John Milledge, Governor or Georgia. For more than 60 years it remained the capital. Many homes and structures survived the periodic fires and destruction of the Civil War. It is also the city where Georgia's state mental asylum is located, and where author Flannery O’Connor spent the adult years of her life (she was born in Savannah), but we didn’t visit her Andalusia home.

Saturday began in a hurry. I had set the alarm clock on my phone, but failed to turn the volume back on after DH on Friday (something I frequently forget). So I had 10 minutes to get up, brush my teeth, shower, shampoo my hair, get dressed, and get out the door to meet Barbara, who was picking me up at 6:30. I made it. We met Jane and Kay in Pooler and Barbara kindly drove all four of us to Milledgeville. We were on time to buy tickets for the trolley tour (there is only one tour a day, and we needed to be there by 11 to get tickets), and we had a little spare time. We found a nice coffee shop and had a snack and some caffeine. Then, back to the trolley, which was wonderful!

We had a narrator, plus a bus driver, and the information and stops were great.

The first stop was a the Old Capital. This building was first constructed in 1807 and is considered the first example of Gothic architecture in a public building in the United States. It served as the seat of Georgia State government for 1807 until 1868, and in its legislative chambers the Secession Convention was held in 1861. The building burned several times, and the latest $10 million renovation was completed in 2000. Since 1879, it has housed the Georgia Military College.

From there, we went to the campus of the Central State Hospital, originally formed in 1842 as the Georgia State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum. By the 1960s, the facility had grown into the largest mental hospital in the world, occupying some 200 buildings on over 2,000 acres, and housed nearly 12,000 patients. After that, with emphasis on deinstitutionalization, the addition of other public psychiatric hospitals, the availability of psychotropic medications, and an increase in community mental health programs, the hospital population drastically decreased, and closed in 2010. Not unlike the Rochester Psych Center, problems with asbestos and lead paint make rehabilitation or demolition hazardous. The buildings are left abandoned and uncared for. 

Next, we went to historic St Stephen’s Episcopal church. During Sherman’s occupation of Milledgeville in 1864, the interior furnishings were used for firewood, and the building itself housed horses of the US Cavalry. Today, it is an active parish.

The final trolley stop was at the Brown-Stetson-Sanford House. The house was build c. 1825 at another location in Milledgeville and moved to the current location in 1966. It had been in the same family for over 100 years, and had been used as a tea room for the decade before moving the building. It is now a house museum. The house has a beautiful Palladian double portico and original pilasters. A cantilevered, oval, spiral staircase dominates the central hall.  

We had reservations to tour the Old Governor's Mansion, so we did that next. It was not part of the trolley tour, but we wanted to see it. This house was build in1839, and was home to Georgia Governors until 1868 when the capital moved to Atlanta. It then served as the founding building of the Georgia Normal & Industrial College. In the 1990s, an initiative to return the mansion to its original splendor was begun, followed by years of intensive historical, structural and material research. It is now a museum with the focus on the history of the building, its occupants both free and enslaved, and the myriad complexities of Antebellum Society in Georgia (can you tell which sentences I lift directly from the brochures?)

At the end of that tour, we were all ready to eat again. We found a cute little pizza place on the main tourist street (but none of us had pizza), The Brick. Although the forecast was for rain, the only precipitation we got was as we were eating, so we got lucky and stayed dry. After that, we walked back to the car, drove to the Memory Hill Cemetery in a vain search for Flannery O’Connor’s resting place, and another spin through the insane asylum so I could get more photos. We were back home by 8:30. Many thanks to Barbara for being our driver, and to her, Jane and Kay for indulging me in a day tour I’ve wanted to do for many years.

In other exciting happenings this past week:

I went to two lectures. One was a Hungry for History at City Hall, and the speaker was my friend and the director of TLC, Roger Smith. He talked about “Savannah’s Literary Legacy” and included such authors as Harry Hervey (buried at BC), Flannery O’Connor (interesting since I planned to be in Milledgeville on the weekend) and John Berendt (not a Savannahian, but author of The Book). The other was at TLC, and was about mid-century modern architecture in Savannah. Because this city seems to focus on architectural history up until the Victorian era, we often don’t recognize or appreciate some of the newer ranch homes built on the Southside in the 1940s -1960s. I enjoyed that.

It was restaurant week here in Savannah, so I met Beverly, Beth, Jackie and Kay for dinner on Tuesday at Ruth’s Chris Restaurant. Except for Kay, I only see these friends during restaurant week, and we missed last winter. It was great to get caught up.

A few weeks ago, I had my eyes checked. I was hoping to get new glasses, because I just never could get used to the bifocals I’ve had for a couple of years now, and I almost always wore my old, scratched glasses. I wanted to get rimless glasses, but couldn’t find them in any of the optical stores around – Georgia Eye institute, Lens Crafters, Walmart, and others. I found this online place, and if you load a photo of yourself, you can “try on” frames. It still wasn’t ideal, as I also wanted to feel how they fit over my ears since I now have hearing aids. But when I saw the cost - $40 total, including shipping – I took a chance that they would be ok. The arrived Saturday, and I think I’m going to like them.