By Eric Curl

July 22, 2021 update – The proposal to designate the Kiah house as a historic structure, along with 89 other Cuyler-Brownville properties, was unanimously approved by the Savannah City Council on July 22. 

March 18, 2021 – Chatham County-Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission staff is recommending that the home of the late educator, artist and Civil Rights activist Virginia Jackson Kiah be designated a contributing structure in Savannah’s historic Cuyler-Brownville neighborhood. The proposal is being presented to the Historic Preservation Commission on March 24 as part of a proposal to designate 90 new historic buildings in Cuyler Brownville, following a survey conducted between 2018 and 2021 that identified properties that were missed or left out in the past. 

The proposed designation comes after the 106-year-old home was recently included on the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2021 list of ‘Places in Peril’, following years of deterioration resulting from a more than two-decade-old Chatham County Probate Case involving Kiah’s estate.

The historic designation adds protections against demolition and deterioration, while requiring that the owner go through an approval process prior to making exterior changes the property.

Built in 1915, the Kiah house at 505 W. 36th St. was transformed into a community museum in the late 1950s by Kiah and her husband, Calvin Kiah, a former Dean of Education at Savannah State College. 

 Kiah made significant modifications to the home, including removal of the ceiling in the front parlor and installation of two-story tall windows on the front of the house, which initially prevented it from being a contributing property when Cuyler Brownville was designated a local historic district.

The Cuyler-Brownville neighborhood was originally developed in the mid-19th century for freed slaves and survives as one of the most intact and continuously occupied African-American neighborhoods in Savannah, according to the MPC staff report. The neighborhood was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.

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