Page 4 of 6
Savannah, Georgia
The sun came up with no conclusions, flowers sleeping in their beds
As nice as Savannah is (and there is no question that it is nice) my favorite place there was filled with dead people. Bonaventure Cemetery is a drive from downtown but easily worth it, a place filled with statues and hanging moss and death, all working together for the greater good.
What is interesting about Savannah- at least in terms of architecture and planning- is its extraordinarily generous system of public squares and parks throughout an otherwise indistinctive grid system. What happens as you walk the city is that every few blocks you find another great little park with another great little statue or another great little fountain, all surrounded by great antebellum background buildings. Each park may be different, although as you walk them they do honestly start to blur together a bit. You no longer remember which park was exactly which, which building was slightly more distinctive then the others, which fountain was somehow more gracious than the last. Still it's the fact that it can all blur together that is Savannah's strong point, that you can walk away knowing that the city is harmonious enough and strong enough to support such conclusions.
On the same weekend that I visited Savannah I also managed some time to drive up to Charleston, South Carolina, a city just as gracious as Savannah although most certainly different in most every way. Both have impressive historic residential cores, but unlike Savannah, Charleston has the sea. Even if you're a few blocks inland you know that the harbor isn't all that far away, and the houses and buildings start to feel less like a gracious working city (like Savannah) and more like a gracious beach resort.
A far different (although eerily similar) experience awaits anyone with the time to make a pilgrimage out to Seaside, Florida- a gracious resort town that's hundreds of years younger than Charleston and the birthplace of New Urbanism, a movement that I'm still not quite sold on.
The idea of Seaside is to create a heavily planned high density community where all of your needs are within walking distance (an idea that I strongly agree with) and to have restrictive design controls so that all of the architecture looks as if it was built a hundred years ago (an idea that I'm not as crazy about). You see the results as you walk through the town- a dense network of sandy pedestrian paths easily connect everything, houses are close together with little or no private yards, and restaurants and shops and the shore are all within easy reach. The buildings feel new but look like they were picked up, dusted off and moved right from Charleston. The perfectness of buildings designed to create a "simpler time, when meals were shared, stories entertained and walking was how people got around (from seasidefl.com)" does have a certain charm but sometimes that really starts to feel like a fake charm, as if someone is smiling graciously but doesn't really mean it. Hard to explain unless you're there I guess.
These quick pictures will give you an idea of what to expect and what I saw- a beachfront pavilion, a beachfront house and a view back toward the town. If all of this seems familiar it might be because of a twelve year old movie starring Jim Carrey called "The Truman Show" which was filmed on location at Seaside. In the movie, Seaside stood in for a Hollywood recreation of a perfect town, although one controlled by an especially creepy, beret wearing Ed Harris. In many ways the scenario isn't that far off from reality, although (as far I know) an especially creepy, beret wearing Ed Harris has nothing to do with real Seaside.
This picture really doesn't need an explanation, but I'll ruin the experience for everyone by giving one anyway. The view from my hotel room outside Savannah is of another sparkling sunrise. That's all.
