If you love elegant interiors and a unique peek into the past, you’re going to love this unique and beautiful house museum. One of the most grand and elegant homes in Savannah’s architectural jewel box, the Andrew Low House showcases the city’s standards for 19th century architecture and provides a glimpse into the life of 1840s and 50s Southern urbanites. Just around the corner from Lafayette Square, the home is mere steps away from the iconic Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist, the much-photographed Hamilton-Turner Inn, the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home and other frequently visited landmarks anchoring Savannah’s National Landmark Historic District. This warm and welcoming museum maintains much of its Victorian-era decor and charm, where visitors can step back in history and take in the complex stories of antebellum society and those who lived and worked in an urban seaport city.
The home is elegant and without pretension, demonstrating the graceful symmetry and proportion popular in the mid-19th century when it was completed in 1849 for Scottish immigrant Andrew Low II and his wife Sarah Cecil Hunter Low. Low arrived in Savannah in 1829 at only seventeen to work for his uncle and namesake in the dry goods and booming cotton factoring business. He had interests and partnerships with numerous Savannah businesses as well as in Liverpool. In 1856, friend of Low and visitor to the home novelist William Makepeace Thackeray wrote:
“I write from the most comfortable quarters I have ever had in the United States…in the house of my friend, Andrew Low.”
William Makepeace Thackeray, 1856
After the death of Sarah Low, Andrew remarried to Mary Cowper Stiles and raised a family in the home as their main residence, though they frequently traveled and spent long periods in England and Scotland. The Museum reflects this period in the home’s life. But the story the museum tells isn’t limited to the Low family: both free and enslaved people play a central role in the Low House’s story. Among the enslaved persons who lived and labored at the site are Tom and Mosiana Milledge, who both spent most of their lives with the Low family. Though little is known about Tom’s early life, he was born into slavery and later lived on the site as the caretaker when the Low family was abroad. Mosianna Delegal married Tom–nearly twenty years her senior–when she was quite young. Mosianna worked for the younger generation of the Low family, Andrew’s son William and William’s wife Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts, often accompanying them on their travels to England.
The legacy of the Andrew Low House is to tell the many and varied stories of those who lived and worked there, showcasing one of the finest collections of period furnishings in the South to visitors from the world over. Continuing its custom of welcoming guests with open arms after almost two centuries, the Andrew Low House’s beautiful house and garden invites visitors to take in the many layers of complex stories to foster a broader understanding of American social and architectural history.
329 Abercorn St. at Lafayette Square
912.233.6854
AndrewLowHouse.com
Tours
Monday-Saturday 10-4 & Sunday 12-4
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