Welcome to the Ardsley Park/Chatham Crescent Neighborhood Association Web Site. The Ardsley Park/Chatham Crescent Neighborhood Association, located in Savannah, GA, is a non-profit community organization founded in 1991 by the area residents and businesses bounded by Victory Drive on the north to 55th Street on the south, and by Waters Avenue on the east to Bull Street on the west. The Ardsley Park/Chatham Crescent Neighborhood Association strives to provide: quality of life; crime awareness; historic preservation; special children’s events; maintain property values; neighborhood beautification; park lighting, plantings, gate restorations; influence on important issues; holiday gatherings; a membership directory; and quarterly newsletters.
For more information about joining the association, please contact the membership chairman at ardsleypark@hotmail.com.
Ardsley Park/Chatham Crescent Neighborhood Association New Member Application
The board meets the second Thursday of every month at 6:30 at the Cody House next to St. Michaels and All Angels Episcopal Church on Washington Avenue.
During the years 1908, 1910 and 1922, plans were taking shape for the construction of a handful of grand homes in Ardsley Park and Chatham Crescent, the city’s first automobile suburbs. These neighborhoods were development simultaneously on open, boggy land on the fringes of the streetcar lines in what was then the southeastern part of Savannah. Surprisingly, Ardsley Park was- and still is- a relatively small subdivision. The idea was the brainstorm of Harry Hays Lattimore, William Lattimore and anonymous partners in the Ardsley Park Land Corporation. No one is certain how the Ardsley name evolved though some have theorized that it was borrowed from a British neighborhood. The area was laid out in grids with squares, similar to the plan used in downtown Savannah by Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe, founder of the colony. The northern and western boundaries of Ardsley Park were marked at Estill Avenue and Bull Street by an impressive looking retaining wall made of Belgian block similar to those used as ballast on ships sailing from England. At key intersections stone pillars with Spanish-looking tile roods marked the entrances to the park. Adjacent to Ardsley Park was a much larger piece of acreage known as the Granger Tract. Owner Harvey Granger was something of a transportation visionary who is credited with paving the first concrete road in the state and finishing the Atlantic Coastal Highway, which ultimately connected the seaboard states with Florida.
Marketed as Chatham Crescent by Granger’s Chatham Land and Hotel Company, the Granger Tract took its design from the Beaux Arts plan popular at the time. At various points in the neighborhood, city blocks were punctuated with one-acre circles (named for city and county officials), a crescent-shaped street, and a landscaped mall. At the end of the palmetto-lined mall stretching between Maupas Avenue to 47th Street was to be the centerpiece of Chatham Crescent – a magnificent tourist facility called the Georgia Hotel.
The Spanish Revival-style hotel was designed by noted architect Henrik Wallin, who assisted Henry Bacon with New York’s Astor Hotel. Apparently the developers hoped that wealthy Northerners would check into what was to be a luxurious hotel and decide to purchase a second home in Chatham Crescent. Unfortunately, the hotel encountered numerous problems and barely got off the ground. Eventually, Savannah High School (now the Savannah Arts Academy) was built on the nearly eight acres of land set aside for the hotel.
Ardsley Park was designed with tree-planting strips, or tree lawns, between the streets and sidewalks, while Chatham Crescent featured large trees planted directly on the front lawns. More than 5,000 trees were planted in Chatham Crescent under the direction of Henri Bignault, a landscape architect trained at the Ecole de Beaux Arts.
By the 1930s, for the most part, development of Ardsley Park and Chatham Crescent was complete. The Lattimore’s next project was Ardmore, to the south of both Ardsley Park and Chatham Crescent. At the southern end of this new neighborhood was diamond-shaped Hull Park, which became a popular recreational site. Bordering one side of the park with the Gould Cottage for Children, funded by millionaire philanthropist Edwin Gould and designed by architect Cletus Bergen. All in all, the Lattimores developed and sold six residential subdivisions, involving more than 1,500 lots.
In 1985, Ardsley Park and Chatham Crescent were name to the National Register of Historic Places under the collective name of Ardsley Park.
(History courtesy of Polly Powers Stramm and Arcadia Press in her book “Savannah’s Historic Neighborhoods: Ardsley Park, Chatham Crescent and Ardmore”).
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