The Telfair Academy is a historic mansion located on 121 Barnard Street in Savannah, GA. It was designed by William Jay and built in 1818. It is one of the few surviving works of Jay and is owned by Telfair Museums. Originally belonging to the Telfair family, it became a free art museum in 1886, making it one of the first ten art museums in America and the oldest public art museum in the South.
The Telfair Academy has an asymmetrical interior, featuring unique rooms such as an octagonal drawing room, a round-ended dining room, and a long drawing room with rounded ends. Its exterior has a projecting four-column portico accessed via side-facing stairs, which is a typical form of William Jay’s design. Its columns are of a composite order, and the portico’s entablature is continued around the building as a string course. The building’s west wing was formerly a carriage house, which was adapted in the 1880s as part of the building’s conversion to a museum, with a fine Adam style woodwork still evident to this day.
The Telfair Academy was built for Alexander Telfair, son of Edward Telfair, one of Georgia’s early post-independence governors. The site on which it was built previously housed the official residence of Georgia’s colonial royal governors. Mary Telfair, Alexander’s sister, bequeathed the house, along with its furnishings and family collections, to the Georgia Historical Society in 1875. The Georgia Historical Society then opened it as the first art museum in the southeastern United States in 1886 after conducting remodeling and expansion work on the building.
The Telfair Academy is located in historic central Savannah, on the west side of Telfair Square. It occupies an entire block, bounded by Barnard, West President, North Jefferson, and West State Streets. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976 and is part of the Savannah Historic District, which is also a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Recent changes to the Telfair Academy’s exterior have been observed, with relief busts on either side of the Telfair name appearing to be relatively new additions. These were not part of the 2015 image at the Wiki link. Additionally, the exterior was white instead of yellow, and the etched words at the top are now painted gold. Despite these changes, the Telfair Academy remains a stunning example of William Jay’s architectural design and a testament to the Telfair family’s significant contribution to the cultural history of Savannah.
Posted by SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent) on 2023-04-08 05:48:49