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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Summer Activities
June 13 through August 2 – Summer Junior Interpreter Program (for teenagers):
The Davenport House Museum offers a free training programs on Thursday evenings in the summer (from 6 to 8 p.m.) teaching public speaking, customer services skill and the museum’s story to young people in their high school years. The program runs June 13 through July 25 with Junior Interpreter Day being Friday, August 2 when young people give their first tours to the public. For information: 912/236-8097 or email jcredle@davenporthousemuseum.org
July – Docent Training Program (for adults):
Davenport House volunteer docent/tour guide training is offered in July. This is a four week training program. The date and time will be determined by participants. Docents lead tours and assist with programming for people from around the world who visit the historic house. Call Dottie Kraft at 236-8097 between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. or email at info@davenporthousemuseum.org
Catalyst in History City: Savannah's Davenport House as Home and Symbol
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.
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