There's a Little Savannah in St. Francisville

For much of the twentieth century Georgia’s oldest city was arguably better known for what it had once been—an important nineteenth century seaport—than what it was by the time Lady Astor visited shortly after the Second World War and described the city as “a beautiful woman with a dirty face.” While the city’s historic core had been saved from the wrecking ball by decades of energetic preservation efforts, Savannah’s end-of-the-line location meant it was largely bypassed by America’s modern transportation infrastructure, rendering the city something of an architectural and cultural time capsule. As sometimes happens in such places, Savannah evolved its own unique set of cultural mores. Around the shaded squares, a peculiar mashup of high society tradition and port-city bohemianism evolved a symbiotic relationship. 

Savannah was awoken from its land-that-time-forgot reverie in 1994, when writer John Berendt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil burst onto the New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for a record 216 weeks. The non-fiction novel captured not only the faded semitropical grandeur of Georgia’s once-mighty port city, but also the gothic escapades of a bizarre cast of characters that called it home. Complete with old and new money, social upheaval, a redneck gigolo, a drag queen, voodoo, and a scandalous society murder, the story captivated the imagination of an America where regional distinctions were being erased by strip-mall homogenization, and resonated with an audience desperate to believe that places still existed where society mattered and eccentricity was elevated to an art form. The attention supercharged Savannah’s tourism economy and, indirectly at least, contributed to the public perception of the city as a place apart from everyday society—where the normal rules of engagement were written differently. What better place for the TV production company Bravo to base the garrulous new reality TV show it was planning? [Read more about that in this story: Southern Charm lives here too.]

If the description above reminds you of anywhere you know, perhaps it’s no surprise that, when Savannah designer, Southern Charm cast member, and inveterate entertainer Brandon Branch first alighted in St. Francisville he felt immediately at home. After all, he and his husband, Jim Johnston, had found themselves in another off-the-beaten-tracks Southern town festooned with Spanish moss, where historic houses lined the streets, parties were taken seriously, and a ten-room Gothic inn building whispered their names. Branch and Johnston bought the St. Francisville Inn and, over the course of a six-month makeover, have conducted a breathtaking restoration. So if, when you visit the St. Francisville Inn, you like the opulent Savannah style that’s reflected there, in a way you have not only Brandon Branch, but also John Berendt, to thank for it.