Oglethorpe and Savannah

By Thomas D. Wilson, AICP, and Patrick O. Shay

Today the Oglethorpe Plan is generally understood to be the 1733 layout preserved in the famous National Historic Landmark District of Savannah, Georgia, a design beloved by residents, adored by visitors, and extolled for its virtues by authorities on city planning and urban design. It is considered one of the world's great plans, comparable in its elegance to the L'Enfant Plan of Washington and the Haussmann Plan of Paris. 

James Edward Oglethorpe's plan, however, was much more ambitious than most observers realize: It was a comprehensive plan for a model colony in which physical design supported a strategic plan with specific social and economic goals. While the details of the plan are not widely understood, its enduring success in Savannah has been an inspiration to advocates of vibrant urban places.

It is surprising that little effort has been made to replicate this acclaimed design. This article seeks to remedy that deficiency by identifying the elements and advantages of the plan and by inviting more discussion on possible applications of such a brilliant design in today's markets.

The contemporary relevance of the Oglethorpe Plan is well-known in Savannah, where it has been embraced for nearly three centuries. The commitment has paid off. Savannah (pop. 142,000) has become a regional hub for business, government, education, entertainment, and the arts, while also attracting more than 12 million tourists a year.

Without the functionality, aesthetics, walkability, and identity made possible by Oglethorpe's design, the city most likely would have suffered the same decline as occurred in other American cities as the nation's population moved to the suburbs.

Savannah plan

Oglethorpe's original layout for the town of Savannah encompassed only 60 acres. Successive generations of Savannahians gradually expanded the original planned area, which now includes nearly a square mile: a vibrant downtown ringed by mixed use neighborhoods. Very few modifications have been made to the original design, which seems capable of adapting to dramatically changing social and economic conditions.

The suggestion that Savannah's historic design should be considered for application elsewhere, particularly in modern communities, might meet with skepticism. Yet, as with new urbanism, historic designs often reemerge with impressive results. The Oglethorpe Plan shares many core principles with new urbanism, and it too has the potential to be widely applied in contemporary settings.

One reason the design has not been widely replicated is that its design elements are unfamiliar to designers and developers. New and unique designs are rarely attempted because they seem risky. Unless a design has a proven track record, it is difficult to sell to lenders who look to past financial success stories for guidance.

Another hindrance to the plan's application is the apparent complexity of the design, which belies its fundamental simplicity. The plan is based on building blocks called wards. While the ward layout is more complex than conventional grids, the pattern is replicable and thus in aggregate it becomes simpler as it repeats. More than any other design concept, it is truly analogous to DNA in its pattern-replicating growth potential.

If the barrier of unfamiliarity can be overcome, we believe the Oglethorpe Plan holds great potential for use in many modern contexts. However, one or two successful public-private ventures may be needed to light the way. Public-sector planners may want to consider encouraging the design in an area targeted for redevelopment where the goal is to create a mixed use district with a comfortable pedestrian-vehicular shared space environment.

Because the ward plan is relatively complete, it provides a model for large-scale developments to start small and grow big.

Design elements

Savannah defines the ward as a small neighborhood district of eight blocks arrayed around a central square. Typically, though not necessarily, a rich mix of uses is permitted within the ward. The blocks surrounding the square are of two types, originally known as tything (residential) blocks and trust (nonresidential) blocks. The four tything blocks are bisected lengthwise by an alley, or lane, while the trust blocks face the central square.

The original allocation of uses for residential and nonresidential development was abandoned as new generations adapted it to changing conditions. However, trust blocks remain preferred sites for prominent civic or commercial buildings because of the visibility of the location on a central view corridor connecting wards.

Tything blocks today are typically mixed use microenvironments. The exact mix within a block can be adjusted for location. For example, a ward in the commercial heart of the city might be composed of blocks of high-rise office and apartment buildings, whereas tything blocks in a predominately residential area might have a more new urbanist town house character.

The scale of the ward is vitally important. Oglethorpe laid out the first six wards at 675 feet on each side, or about 10 acres exclusive of surrounding rights-of-way. Since wards are separated from each other by streets on all four sides, the centerline-to-centerline dimensions of the original wards are 720 feet by 750 feet, or about 12 acres.

Later wards were laid out with slightly different dimensions. However, the 24 wards ultimately built in Savannah all retained the same basic size and configuration. The size of the central square and enclosing blocks all remained close to the original specifications, with reductions in some residential areas to fit within previously established perimeter roads.

The dimensions of the original six squares were 315 feet by 270 feet, or nearly two acres. When streets were established within the original squares, the portion remaining for civic uses was reduced to about one acre.

The unique ward design creates an efficient hierarchy of streets and an environment that fosters fine-grained development. The street network connects each ward to neighboring wards at eight intersections. Broad, or axial, streets create a vista from each square in each ward through each of the surrounding wards. The effect is to make each ward a unique and separate neighborhood, but with a remarkable sense of openness to the larger community.

Streets separating wards can be designed to meet additional purposes, thereby adding new levels to the street hierarchy. A main street and boulevards with landscaped medians can be added to the network without disrupting the overall pattern.

The genetic nature of the Savannah design means that it has no predetermined boundaries. A community being developed with the design can grow organically. This feature offers an advantage over other models, including new urbanism, which tend to have well-defined centers, transitional areas, and edges. The Oglethorpe plan is multicentric, and thus capable of producing uniquely flavored neighborhoods, business districts, and corridors.

Developers benefit because phased development can be more market-responsive. Residents and business owners benefit because they can influence the character of their immediate environment, the ward.

Advantages of the design

The ward design has a number of functional characteristics that produce specific advantages over other designs. These include:

Genetic. The repeating pattern is fine-grained, engendering familiarity while accommodating variations for the environment and other local conditions.

Nondeterministic and adaptive. Growth is not entirely dependent on a master plan or design template. It can occur organically, one ward at a time, and adapt to changing market conditions.

Multicentric. Multiple centers of civic life and business activity exist within each ward. The ward design creates a sense of place in part by creating a richly textured microenvironment within a larger framework of spatial regularity, while preserving opportunities for a strong commercial core or main street.

Organic. Natural growth can readily respond to constraints presented by ecology, topography, or existing infrastructure dictated by master plans.

Dimorphic. There is a dual system of spatial orientation. Broad avenues are aligned with the central squares, and the streets follow a geometric pattern. The combination of landmark and coordinate design features eases wayfinding.

Eidetic. Interconnecting wards create microenvironments that vary in use but retain a similar form. Axial street segments terminate at a square, creating micro-corridors between squares that are suitable for prominent buildings. The overall effect is one of familiarity and identity.

Civic. Public squares are at one-eighth mile intervals, promoting neighborhood-centric civic life. Ward residents and businesses can be readily organized to participate in civic affairs.

Humanistic. Nucleated public squares promote visual interest and create pedestrian-vehicular shared space. The inward-facing buildings on or near the square create the feeling of an intimate and safe environment.

Holistic. The repeating design creates multiple outdoor "suites" with unique identities drawn together in a unified composition through a variety of attractive passages. The architectural historian Paul Zucker described these suites as "little islands of neighborliness and intimacy seldom found in a big city." The pattern of interconnected neighborhoods allows for decentralized commercial development and a rich mix of uses while promoting local business investment in commercial corridors.

Safe. Street segments and squares are enclosed in, and visually connected with, an interactive built environment. The visual connection between civic and private space engenders a sense of ownership that is central to "defensible space."

Comparison with new urbanism

The ward design establishes more intersections and street segments of variable length than those found in a comparable new urbanist grid. That design also creates more opportunities for unique residential, commercial, and civic uses. As a result, each ward has the potential for a complex urban ecology with a unique identity. In a new urbanist design, this degree of complexity is typically only found at the center of a development.

Another difference: New urbanist designs often use roundabouts in areas beyond the central square. This limits the potential for a complex human ecology, and it reduces the availability of "shared space" (the comfortable intermingling of pedestrians and vehicles). In contrast, repetition of the square in the Oglethorpe Plan distributes shared space throughout the community.

Research on shared space has demonstrated a threshold for comfortable pedestrian-vehicular interaction at vehicular speeds of 20 miles per hour. The scale of Oglethorpe's ward naturally constrains speeds to this limit.

Moreover, sight angles for approaching traffic do not exceed 90 degrees, a maximum for quick assessment of traffic conditions. In contrast, roundabouts — favored by new urbanists — often allow higher speeds and create uncomfortable sight angles. Only when roundabouts reach a much larger size are they competitive with a square in creating useful civic space.

Comparison with Jacobs's principles

Jane Jacobs prescribed a form of urban human ecology like that fostered by the Oglethorpe Plan when she spoke of the importance of the "functional identity" of neighborhoods in city planning. She demonstrated the importance of parks, squares, and public buildings in establishing neighborhood identity and building urban identity from neighborhood building blocks, much as the new urbanists have done.

Jacobs went on to demonstrate the crucial role of multiple urban functions within districts. Multiple functions attract people to the public realm, thereby creating a dynamic urban environment. A fine-grained mix of older and newer structures as well as functions makes room for varying economic returns and adds to overall urban vitality and income diversity.

The Oglethorpe Plan is an ideal model with which to achieve the goals that Jane Jacobs articulated. It builds large communities from small neighborhoods, nurtures unique identity among neighborhoods, and establishes an equitable urban environment in which people of varied incomes, ages, and ethnicities can find their place.

Contemporary applications

Far from being an artifice of the 18th century, the Oglethorpe Plan has proven to be readily adaptable to contemporary building architecture, proving its relevance to today's development needs again and again. The relatively small block size is perfect for multi-family residential development, especially row houses with town houses over garden apartment flats, with interior courtyards and "carriage house" apartments on the lanes, similar to English mews. 

The plan is equally well adapted to large apartment blocks and hotels because it allows double-loaded corridors, street-level public functions, services in the lanes, and underground parking. The secret to its architecture may be that its many street corners also allow many building corners, and exterior windows on two sides of many interior spaces.

Using these inherent advantages, relatively high-density development can be integrated into livable and walkable surroundings.

As to costs and benefits: Contemporary developers often try to save costs by reducing public space and rights-of-way to the minimum. This may be necessary in gated communities, where those streets are privately owned and maintained. The Oglethorpe Plan takes the opposite view, providing a high ratio of public to private space, but increasing the value of the private land in this way.

This makes the ward module and the Oglethorpe Plan perfect for public-private development strategies, providing greatly enhanced tax base and community space for the public, and equally enhanced return on investment for the private sector. The public also takes care of maintaining the public space, reducing or eliminating regime fees.

Genesis of the plan

The Oglethorpe Plan was the third of three utopian plans implemented in America by English visionaries during the colonial era. It was preceded by Anthony Ashley Cooper's 1670 plan for Carolina and William Penn's 1681 plan for Pennsylvania.

The 1733 Oglethorpe Plan, unlike its utopian predecessors, was developed during the Enlightenment. One can see the influence of two of the towering figures of the age, Isaac Newton and John Locke. Newton's Principia Mathematica produced a deep respect for the mathematical order and harmony in the universe. Locke's Two Treatises of Government produced a theoretical foundation for modern democratic republics. The order and harmony in Oglethorpe's design was coupled with a social and economic plan for a model yeoman republic similar to the one later envisioned by Thomas Jefferson.

The origin of Oglethorpe's ward design has been a subject of conjecture for generations. It appears likely that Oglethorpe synthesized design elements from a number of sources, including Roman colonial design, Renaissance concepts of the ideal city, and proposals for rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666.

When Oglethorpe arrived in the New World, he had been working on the design for at least two years. The ward layout was intended to be a model for all new cities in Georgia. Ultimately it was applied in Savannah and the towns of New Ebenezer, Darien, and Frederica. 

Darien has preserved two of its wards and plans to restore others. Frederica is no longer a town, but its layout can be seen at Fort Frederica National Monument. Other Georgia towns, such as Brunswick, later borrowed elements of the plan.

Savannah today

Today, Savannah is experiencing another cycle of investment and growth as its economy evolves from manufacturing and service industries into tourism, education, and creative enterprises. Numerous hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues have cropped up, accompanied by increased demand for good public places.

The community has wisely chosen to regulate this development in order to respect the original Oglethorpe Plan through a rigorous design review process and limitations on density that are both prescriptive and visual. One important side effect of these limitations is that Savannah remains one of the few cities in the U.S. where people come to leave their automobiles behind.

Because the Oglethorpe Plan's frequent intersections slow down traffic speeds, people can navigate the center city in dozens of creative and unusual ways. What's next? Possibly the return of streetcars, which would allow many more people to enjoy the serenity of Savannah's busy historic city center.

Thomas D. Wilson was formerly director of comprehensive planning in Savannah and is the author of The Oglethorpe Plan: Enlightenment Design in Savannah and Beyond, published in 2012 by the University of Virginia Press. Patrick Shay is senior principal at Gunn Meyerhoff Shay Architects, and a former Chatham County Commissioner.

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Resources

Images: Top — Broad streets link the squares and create view corridors between wards. Photo courtesy Thomas D. Wilson. Middle — The 10-acre ward — a small neighborhood of eight blocks arrayed around a central square: a. Tything blocks (residential); B. Broad Street (axial); c. Trust Blocks (nonresidential). There are 24 wards in Savannah today, 22 of which retain their original shape. Ogelthorpe Avenue and Liberty Street are boulevards with landscaped medians. Maps by Teri Norris. Bottom — Tything blocks today could be mixed use microenvironments or chiefly residential. Trust blocks remain preferred sites for prominent civic or commercial buildings. Photo courtesy Thomas D. Wilson.

See these classics: The Design of Cities, by Edmund Bacon. Forty Years of Diversity: Essays on Colonial Georgia, edited by Harvey Jackson and Phinizy Spalding. Great Streets, by Allan Jacobs. Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns, by Victor Dover and John Massengale. "Oglethorpe's Plan of Savannah: Urban Design, Speculative Freemasonry, and Enlightenment Charity," by Mark Reinberger, in the Georgia Historical Quarterly (Winter 1997).