The Georgia Historical Society’s Research Center has now reopened not only to the 60,000 historians, scholars, documentarians, researchers, students and journalists who visit annually, but also — and perhaps more so — to the many Savannahians who may not be as aware of the treasures preserved there.
This graceful space first was dedicated as the repository of Georgia’s pre-colonial and revolutionary history in 1876, a time when Savannah, not Atlanta, was the state’s most culturally and economically relevant city. The property was a gift by Mary Telfair and her sister Margaret Telfair Hodgson to memorialize her late husband William B. Hodgson, a scholar of Middle Eastern studies and an American diplomat, who had died five years earlier.
The $5 million restoration of historic Hodgson Hall and the expansion of the 1970s-era Abrahams Annex are the most visible results of a 10-year, $23 million capital campaign that launched in 2008 after years of GHS staff growing concerned about space to viably store the blossoming collection, which had been passively growing for decades.
You can read more in an article by Amy Paige Condon, publish3d in the Savannah Morning News‘ web site, at: https://bit.ly/3tkfz9z.