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-May 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.

TEA IN THE GARDEN AT THE DAVENPORT HOUSE

Thursdays and Fridays in May 2014

PROGRAM DATES AND TIMES: May 1, 2, 8, 9, 15 and 16 at 4:30 p.m. and 22, 23, 29 and 30 at 5:00 p.m.]

ADMISSION: $18

Reservations recommended. Limited attendance.

LENGTH OF PROGRAM: 60 to 75 minutes

Learn about tea traditions and experience an early 19th century tea in Davenport House’s beautiful courtyard garden. Patrons will visit areas of the home where tea service took place and will participate in an afternoon tea given with costumed interpreters in the garden.

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

DISCOVERING 1820S SAVANNAH: EARLY BIRD’S WALKING TOUR OF THE CITY ISAIAH KNEW

Saturdays in May 2014

PROGRAM DATES: May 3, 10, 17, 24, 31

TIME: 8 a.m.

LENGTH OF PROGRAM: 120 minutes

DISTANCE OF WALK: 2.5 miles.

ADMISSION: $21

See what survives of the 1820s Savannah that master builder Isaiah Davenport knew. Beginning at the Davenport House Museum (1820) participants will walk by some of the finest examples of preservation in the city and learn about what no longer remains. Topics to include the Great Fire of 1820, the yellow fever epidemic of 1820, Lafayette’s visit to Savannah in 1825 and the celebrations surrounding the 50th anniversary of the United States in 1826. Coffee and treats in the Davenport House garden will follow.

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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.