Residents near Wright Square can now enjoy the square more comfortably following the city of Savannah’s renovation. On Tuesday, city officials, workers and the public celebrated $90,000 worth of improvements.
In addition to beautification, the makeover was intended to increase visibility and improve safety in the square on Bull Street, between State and York streets, which had become known as a location for thefts, vagrancy, loitering, drinking and other illicit activities.
“When you have public space that is shielded from plain view, people can obviously lay and wait,” said Mayor Pro Tem Van Johnson, who watched the improvements daily from his nearby office.
Heidi Reed, wife of Downtown Neighborhood Association President Hank Reed, said she and other residents had grown tired of the vagrancy.
“I feel sorry for homeless people, but this is not a place to sleep,” she said. “That’s a concern for downtown neighborhoods.”
Landscape work was nearly 30 years old in the square, which had become overgrown with azaleas that provided cover to illicit activities often encountered by business owners, tourists and residents.
Improvements included the relocation of plants, pruning of mature trees, removal of inferior competing trees and shrubs, turf replacement, repairs to brick walkways, and upgrades to the electrical and irrigation systems.
Four dozen concrete benches were replaced with two dozen wooden and iron, Victorian-style benches. Gravel was added around the Tomochichi monument. And brick viewing areas were installed north and south of Gordon Monument and feature railroad symbols in honor of the Central of Georgia Railway company that erected the monument in the late 19th century in tribute to its first president, William Washington Gordon.
The Gordon monument, located in the center of the square, was inspected and treated with biological cleaning solution to protect it from algae, mold and mildew, said jerry flemming, the city’s director of park and trees and of cemeteries.
The city’s Citizen Office, which serves as a liaison to the public, will be in charge of daily maintenance in the square.
The project is part of a larger effort that began two years ago to improve the city’s famous squares. In October 2011, approximately $80,000 worth of improvements to Chippewa Square were unveiled. Reynolds Square is next on the list of 21 more projects funded by the city’s capital improvements budget.
“Our squares in Savannah have had some very nice landscapes going back to James Edward Oglethorpe,” Flemming said.
“The one thing we forget sometimes when we plant the landscape is that for a landscape to be successful, it has to grow, develop and change.”
Work in Wright Square began earlier this year but didn’t become apparent until April. Over the summer, city crews unexpectedly discovered a more than 100-year-old cistern 13.5 feet high and 14 feet in diameter, capable of holding 16,000 gallons of rain water for firefighting and other practical uses.
Wright Square is one of the six original squares laid out in 1733 by Oglethorpe. It was initially named in honor of Viscount Percival but later renamed for Georgia’s last royal governor, James Wright. Its location between the federal and old county courthouses also earned it the nickname courthouse square, said Flemming.