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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WINTER AND EARLY SPRING PROGRAMS
“Potable Gold”: Savannah’s Madeira Tradition
Friday and Saturday evenings in February 2012
[Program dates: February 18, 24, 25]
5:30 p.m.
75 minutes
Admission: $20 (must be 21 years of age)
Reservations recommended. Limited attendance.
Experience the historic atmosphere of the Davenport House while learning about and tasting a unique and flavorful wine. Patrons are oriented to the long and rich tradition of Madeira (wine) as it relates to the history of Savannah and then they will participate in a Madeira party. During the experience they will sample two types of Madeira and see the historic house at dusk including spaces usually off-limits to museum guests.
The performance requires that guests be able to walk up and down stairs and maneuver in the candlelit rooms.
Tea at Mrs. Davenport’s
Thursdays and Fridays (and one Wednesday) in March 2012
[Program dates and times: March 1, 2, 8, 9, 15, 16 and 21 at 5 p.m., March 22, 29 and 30 at 4:30 p.m.]
60 to 75 minutes
Admission: $18
Reservations recommended. Limited attendance.
Learn about tea traditions and experience an early 19th century tea in the historic atmosphere of the Isaiah Davenport House Museum. Patrons will tour areas of the historic home where tea service took place and will participate in an afternoon tea with costumed interpreters.
The performance requires that guests be able to walk up and down stairs.
Also see our new video: The Story of Historic Savannah Foundation (abridged version for Davenport House Museum)
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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