Savannah, 1967, 2026

“A wormhole is a hypothetical structure that connects disparate points in spacetime.” Wikipedia

A friend, doing some research on properties in Warren Ward, a neighborhood less than a block from our home (Washington Ward), came across this old newspaper clipping from March of 1967.

I do not remember that assignment. I was 19 years old, working full time as a staff photographer at the Savannah Morning News-Evening Press (two different newspapers, with two separate editorial staffs; I swear). I was also a full time student at Armstrong State College (now Georgia Southern University), trying to hang onto my 2S Selective Service student deferment. I dropped Calculus, lost my deferment, enlisted in the Army, and reported for active duty 6 months later.

If you had told me then I would live in the next block, the idea would have been so alien to me I wouldn’t have even bothered to pooh-pooh it.

We lived downtown when I was 3, mostly because that would have been the cheapest rent my parents could find. Our family was part of the “White Flight” movement from urban to suburban, except we went a little farther, to countryside, where we were surrounded by forests. Mom and dad were country people and wanted enough land to have a garden. City living was not in my experience nor on my radar.

Also, the preservation/restoration movement was only about a decade old then and downtown Savannah was another 1-2 decades from approaching the kind of popular appeal, and sometimes magical beauty, it has now.

Ann and Mills Lane were early proponents of reviving downtown, investing in the area just east of the central business district. They moved this house across the street from it’s original location, and had it restored. Lane also restored the building our home is in, with one of the workers finding an old gold coin while doing the roof work.

Now my parents’ little acre is just part of the metro area, surrounded by a large school and tract housing; the neighborhood is bisected by the Truman Parkway. And I have fallen through a wormhole, living down the street from the Carswell House.

(To read the full clipping, go to https://www.savannahga.gov/2947/Ward-Notebooks#docaccess-6f153dca1de21733b6e51a70cd764544b36eef6080c41821a05819674254384b Courtesy of the City of Savannah Municipal Archives)

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index