Savannah Mayor Van Johnson and council members will continue on Thursday meeting in their “temporary digs” at the school board’s Whitney Administrative Complex for the foreseeable future, while the gold-domed Renaissance Revival city hall at 2 E. Bay St. undergoes some reconstructive surgery.
Council chambers at Savannah City Hall have been stripped down to a shell as part of the city’s multi-phase restoration of the building. The first phase entails publicly accessible spaces on the first two floors on the building’s west wing, space that comprises council chambers and city archives.
The restoration of the circa-1905 building aims to strike a balance between upgrading city hall to a modern office space while preserving it as a historic museum building, said city of Savannah Director of Municipal Archives Luciana Spracher.
“The difference between a restoration and a renovation is that you are trying to preserve and bring back the original condition, your original materials,” Spracher said. “If we were doing a renovation, we wouldn’t necessarily be as worried about the historic material, but this is an important historic asset that we are the caretakers for.”