By Eric Curl
Nov. 7, 2023 – The Historic Savannah Foundation is petitioning to amend the future land map at the Metropolitan Planning Commission’s meeting on Nov. 7. The amendment from traditional residential to traditional commercial would allow the property be used as a museum once again. Staff is recommending approval.
The potential rezoning comes about one month after the Savannah City Council approved an agreement with the Galvan Foundation, along with the appropriation of up to $500,000, for the acquisition and renovation of the Kiah house.
Following the council’s approval of the agreement, the Historic Savannah Foundation sold the Kiah House to Galvan’s newly formed subsidiary, the Kiah House Museum, Inc., for $100,000 on Oct. 30, according to sales records.
The house at 505 W. 36th St. in historic Cuyler Brownville was transformed into a community museum in the late 1950s by the late artist and educator Virginia Jackson Kiah and her husband, Calvin Kiah, a former Dean of Education at Savannah State College.
Read past Galvan Foundation coverage
The Historic Savannah Foundation purchased the property in 2022 after the structure had deteriorated as a result of a more than two-decade-old Chatham County Probate Case concerning the estate of Virginia Kiah, who died in 2001.
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