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Tuesday, February 5
A City by Design
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SCAD student volunteers and me at the scholarship gala |
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Another nice shot of the scholarship gala and décor at the River Club |
It was 275 years ago this month, in February 1733, that General James Oglethorpe and 113 other intrepid travelers first ascended the bluff overlooking the Savannah River. It must have been a typical Lowcountry winter day – somehow warm and cool, gray and bright, all at the same time. Oglethorpe looked up and saw the possibility of that bluff, of what it could become. What it became was the first city of Georgia and one of the finest cities in all of America.
Now, nearly 300 years later, Savannah is known for its multiple squares, its canopied sidewalks and streets, its historic architecture, its timeless layout and design. Of course, it was nothing like this when General Oglethorpe began constructing Savannah. It was unplanned, unmapped, unmade. But he had vision. For both practical and aesthetic reasons, he wanted the city to be full of natural green space. Because of that vision, Savannah is an American gem and the perfect home for the study of disciplines such as historic preservation, architecture, architectural history, urban design, and really any creative endeavor where beauty and atmosphere mean something. General Oglethorpe’s Savannah was a small colonial outlier, and now it’s a cultural and arts mecca, an international city that, still and all, is quintessentially American.
Last week, we held our annual President’s Scholarship Dinner and Scholarship Gala at SCAD, two events that raise money for the college’s most significant need ... scholarships (read here about how we made the dinner and gala “eco-chic”). In many ways, supporting SCAD scholarships is not so different from doing what General Oglethorpe did when he climbed up that bluff and started planning this city. The vision of an 18th-century man initiated the flourishing of a 21st-century city. Likewise, the vision of our scholarship donors today will guarantee the flourishing of artists and designers in the years, the decades, maybe even the centuries to come. And that’s an investment worth making.
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