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Savannah Tidbits

In case you didn’t know but were dying to find out, here are a few interesting tidbits about this funky place called Savannah that probably fall into the ‘betcha didn’t know category’:

SAVANNAH FACTS

• 300,000 residents – smart, quirky, cool
• 49,000 bright young college students
• 38,000 miles of fiber optic cable
• 400 brain-based businesses
• 275 years rich in history
• 100 square miles of highspeed wireless broadband
• 80 miles of coastline
• 64 art galleries
• 52 daily non-stop flights
• 44 public parks and squares
• 12 colleges and universities
  
• world’s largest digital media studio (SCAD Montgomery Hall)
• world’s largest art and design college (Savannah College of Art and Design)
• world’s first planned city – Savannah (Oglethorpe’s squares)
• world’s first steamship to cross the Atlantic (the ‘Savannah’)
• largest urban tree canopy in the U.S.
• nation’s largest historic landmark district
• nation’s largest contiguous max 35mph speed zone area

POINTS OF INTEREST

• Skidaway Island has a 600 acre marine science research campus with 6 educational, governmental and research entities, including NOAA, MarEx, DNR, UGA’s Marine Aquarium, GTech and SSU’s wet labs, and the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography.
• Savannah has 571 private and public wifi hotspots in the historic district alone.
• The port of Savannah is the 4th largest container port in the US.
• The Creative Coast region of Georgia contains 1/3 of all salt marsh on the entire East Coast of the U.S.
• Roebling Road racetrack is one of the premier road-racing spots in the U.S.
• SE Atlantic Bight is the only calving spot for the Right whales, one of the most endangered species of marine mammals.
• Gray’s Reef is one of 7 National Marine Sanctuaries in the U.S.

SIGNIFICANT COMPANIES (complete list)

• Gulfstream – leading maker of private jets
• Verisign – world leader in online transactions, supplier of all .com and .net Internet domains
• Veriphone – leading payment processing company
• JCB – world’s 3rd largest maker of heavy equipment
• Memorial Health – one of the most advanced and wired healthcare complexes in the state
• Benedetto Guitars – world premier maker of custom arch-top jazz guitars
• Randy Woods Guitars – renowned maker of custom mandolin and guitars
• Gretsch Guitars – leading maker of musical instruments
• Brasseler USA – leading maker of precision dental instruments

LEED BUILDINGS (Leadership in Energy Efficient Design)

• highest density of LEED certified professionals
• 1st LEED certified McDonald’s restaurant
• 1st LEED certified historic building renovation
• 1st LEED certified retail shopping center
• 6 out of 170 LEED certified buildings in the U.S. are in Savannah

PRESIDENTIAL VISITS

• George Washington
• Howard Taft
• Harry Truman
• John F. Kennedy
• Lyndon Johnson
• Richard Nixon
• Gerald Ford
• Jimmy Carter
• Ronald Reagan

CELEBRITIES

• India Arie – SCAD grad
• Camoflage
• Ben Aflack
• Sandra Bullock
• John Cougar Mellancamp
• Greg Allman
• Jennifer Lopez
• Editor of the Economist
• Jim Wann – wrote Pump Boys and Dinettes
• bass player of ACDC
• Bob James (jazz musician)
• the guy that invented Crocks

NATIVES (complete list)

• Stacy Keach
• Big Boi from Outkast
• Conrad Aiken
• Nathanael Greene
• DJ Lord of Public Enemy
• Ted Turner
• Flannery O’Connor
• Clarence Thomas
• W.W. Law
• Johnny Mercer

‘BETCHA DIDN’T KNOW

• The Creative Coast Region has over 378,000 acres of saltmarsh.

• The Altamaha River drains the 7th largest watershed on East Coast and with a flow rate of 100,000 gallons per minute and constitutes 1/6 of all the freshwater that flows into the South East Atlantic Bight.

• Savannah is home to NOAA Grays Reef Marine Sanctuary, one of 7 National Marine Sanctuaries in the US. It also happens to have 163 different species of fish.

• Savannah has over 1100 buildings listed on National Historic Register.

• The artist who created Savannah’s statue of General Oglethorpe that dominates Chippewa Square was none other than Daniel Chester French, the same artist of Lincoln Memorial fame.

• The artist who created Savannah’s Waving Girl statue on River Street was Felix DeWeldon Iwo, the same artist who created the famous Iwo Jima statue.

• Famed architect William Jay built a numbers of homes in Savannah that still shine today.

• Savannah was the first city in Georgia with desegregated lunch counters.

• In 1947, as the 1st integrated police force, the Savannah police department was one of the first in the Deep South to hire African American officers.

• In 1962 Martin Luther King Jr. said Savannah was “the most integrated city in the South”.

• The Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences was one of the South’s first public museums.

• The First African Baptist Church of Savannah is one of the oldest black Baptist congregations in the United States.

• Temple Mickve Israel is the third oldest synagogue in America.

• The Central of Georgia Railway roundhouse complex is the oldest standing antebellum rail facility in America.