Davenport House

Your Visit

Visiting the Davenport House is essential in experiencing the history of Savannah and its historic preservation renaissance. For information about hours and options for your visit.
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Our Museum

Throughout its fifty-years plus history as a museum, the Davenport House Museum has striven to provide visitors with a true and vivid encounter with a uniquely Savannah story.
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Discoveries

There are currently approximately 500 items in the collection, including furniture, ceramics, lighting devices, and more. Along with approximately 200 fragments found in an archeological dig at the site.
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Calendar

To complement its fine daily house tour, the Davenport House offers before- and after- hours special tours, activities and living history programs throughout the year which enlivens the story it tells.
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April Programs! Spring is Here!

EARLY BIRD’S PRESERVATION WALKING TOUR OF THE LANDMARK HISTORIC DISTRICT’S EAST SIDE

Saturdays in April 2014

PROGRAM DATE: April 5, 12, 19, 26

TIME: 8 a.m.

ADMISSION: $21

LENGTH OF PROGRAM: 100 minutes.

DISTANCE OF WALK: 2.5 miles

Take an early morning walk through one of the oldest and most varied neighborhoods to learn how historic preservation has revitalized downtown Savannah. Tours led by the Davenport House director will introduce the personalities, structures and issues that have enthralled Savannah’s preservation movement. Coffee and treats in the Davenport House garden to follow.

Pilot – LAFAYETTE FETE: HISTORIC EXCITEMENT WITH A FRENCH FLAIR

PROGRAM DATES: Sunday, April 6 and Sunday, April 13

TIME: 4:30 p.m.

ADMISSION: $10 per adult, $5 per child under 17

LENGTH OF PROGRAM: 75 minutes
Call for reservations: 912/236-8097. Reserved places are encouraged.

Experience the excitement surrounding General Lafayette’s visit to Savannah in spring 1825. Participants will visit the house where costumed characters will expound on the great man’s time in Savannah as well as recounting events from his life. A simulation of the ball held in Lafayette’s honor with a dance exhibition by the Davenport Dancers will be part of the presentation. Light refreshments a la francaise will follow.

The performance requires that guests be able to walk up and down stairs.

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See our award winning videos!

“Isaiah Davenport: Portrait of a Master Builder” , 2014 Silver Telly Award for TV Programs, Segments or Promotional Pieces – Documentary. See the link.
“Yellow Fever in Savannah”, 2014 Bronze Telly Award for Non-Broadcast Productions – Education. See the link.

Catalyst in History City: Savannah's Davenport House as Home and Symbol

Davenport Museum House At the Davenport House visitors glimpse into the American past when the nation was new and Isaiah Davenport, a young carpenter from New England, achieved success as a builder in his adopted city. The world of 1820s Savannah is presented through the outstanding Federal-style home Davenport built for his household.

Davenport’s fine home was a tangible demonstration of his builder’s skills as well as a residence for his growing family and the enslaved people who worked in the home and in his business. Furnished as it would have been in the 1820s, the museum received a Preserve America Presidential Award for the authentic period restoration.

While the story of the original owner’s time is compelling, the twentieth century history of the house offers a chronicle of dilapidation, rescue, and restoration. Passing out of Davenport family hands in the mid-19th century, the building became a tenement in an unsavory part of Savannah in the mid-20th century. Its survival is a testament to the tenacity of seven Savannah women who came together in 1955 to save the structure from demolition. This action prompted the founding of the Historic Savannah Foundation, which has brought about an architectural renaissance through historic preservation in the coastal Georgia city.

Today, as an historic house museum, the Isaiah Davenport House provides a look at domestic life and aesthetics from an earlier time as it welcomes visitors from across the United States and around the world to historic Savannah.