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| The Adam Strain building presides over tabby ruins (Landmark Preservation) |
Missy Brandt
Wilson grew up surrounded by history and Spanish moss in Darien, a coastal
Georgia town that once rivaled Savannah for port activity. She was particularly fascinated
by the Adam Strain building, a picturesque two-story structure that overlooked rows
of tabby ruins and the waterfront.
Over time,
the condition of the shuttered circa 1813-1815 commercial building declined.
“I would put
my hands on the building and pray on it, and say, ‘Please hold on until someone
can save you,’” said Wilson.
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| View of waterfront (Landmark Preservation) |
That the Darien
landmark was still standing on the bluff during Wilson’s teen years was
something of a miracle. It had survived two fires – most famously during the
Civil War when Federal troops torched Darien in June 1863 – and several
hurricanes.
Darien’s destruction by black troops, under orders
from a virulently anti-slavery white officer, caused a howl of protest across
the South and even in newspapers in the North. Those favoring emancipation were
split on whether the act was barbarity or a necessary message. (The burning of
Darien was made famous in the 1989 film “Glory.”)
The Strain building was repaired after the war and saw a
rebirth for several decades before it was used for storage following World War II. Made of oyster shell tabby and stucco, the oldest structure in Darien was beloved by its 2,000 residents, who worried for its future as its appearance worsened.
The years
rolled on. The building’s condition had become so precarious by 2008 that the
Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation placed it on its "Places in Peril" list.
Now, after
several campaigns to save the Strain -- including a time where it looked like the building would be demolished -- Wilson’s and others’ prayers have been
answered: A Marietta, Ga., couple has purchased the building and an annex and
plan to restore them.
Milan and
Marion Savic have taken on a big project. They must first stabilize the
crumbling building before restoration begins. Their hope is to eventually lease
the building for retail space and open a museum in the one-story adjoining
annex.
“We want to
bring it back to something beautiful,” Marion Savic recently told the Picket.
“We are not tearing something down to bring something else in.”
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| Extensive framing inside the Strain (Landmark Preservation) |
Residents and
officials hope the Savics’ investment will have a significant economic impact. Darien,
hit hard by the economic slowdown a decade ago, wants to attract more retirees who
live along coastal Georgia and motorists who get off Interstate 95 to take in
history, the small shrimping fleet and the natural beauty of the area.
The
preservation of the Strain building, which sits on the southeast corner of
Broad and Screven streets, is just one piece – albeit a significant one – in
any plans to boost the small downtown district, which has enjoyed a resurgence
in recent years.
The Savics
are committed to doing their part, and observers credit preservation-minded
residents and social media for their role in helping to save the building from
demolition.
Among those the
Savics have hired for the project is preservation planning consultant Rebecca
Fenwick of Ethos Preservation in Savannah. Like others, she touts the
building’s tabby construction, distinctive roof line, large buttresses, corner
quoins, metal shutters and stepped gable parapet.
“It stands
very proud overlooking the river,” Fenwick says. “Here is a building still
standing. Your heart cries out, it has been vacant so long.”
Tabby building sat above busy waterfront
As legendary
coastal Georgia historian and author Buddy Sullivan points out, the Adam Strain
Building did not attain its name until after the Civil War. The builder’s name
is not known with certainty.
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| Supports were added after fires, hurricanes (Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation) |
But the
construction techniques may well have been inspired by planter and slave owner
Thomas Spalding, who used tabby on nearby Sapelo Island. Tabby is a type of
cement made from crushed oyster shells and was popular in the region for
several centuries leading up to the Civil War. Stucco is placed on the exterior
to protect it from water damage.
Very few tabby
structures remain along the coast.
Sullivan says
the town’s heyday in the first half of the 19th century was due to
the Altamaha River, which delivered agriculture goods, including cotton, from
the state’s interior. Rice and other crops were grown in McIntosh County and
surrounding counties.
The Strain building
was used to store cotton prior to shipment in 1861 and 1862 before the Union
naval blockade clamped down on Georgia’s coast.
In an article
he wrote last year for McIntosh Life, a special section of the Darien News,
Sullivan described a conjectural drawing of how the waterfront likely looked by
the mid-1830s, a few years after Scottish Highlanders settled there.
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| Warehouse ruins near the Strain (Wikipedia: Jud McCranie) |
“The
two-story building later known as the Strain Building is shown in the sketch as
an upper bluff structure. The waterfront is depicted as being alive with
activity: schooners loading baled cotton, Oconee boxes unloading cotton,
traffic in dray wagons, coaches and horses along the shore, and cotton factors
inspecting the latest deliveries from upriver.”
Fire raged through town during Civil War raid
By
then, Savannah was well into it ascendance of being Georgia’s principal port,
as more goods were being sent there by railroad. Darien’s economic fortunes
suffered a small downturn in the decades before the Civil War.
Then war came, and the Federal blockade of Southern ports put a squeeze on the South.
By summer 1863, coastal towns knew that where the Union army
was going, emancipation of slaves was soon to follow. That fact permeated
society in Darien. Most of the town’s 500 white souls had fled before June 11,
frightened by the blockade and the deployment of African-American troops on
nearby St. Simons Island.
On
that day, Darien was largely vacant.
Darien
held little strategic value to the Union, but Col. James Montgomery, commanding
the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers, supposedly believed it was a safe haven for
blockade runners.
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| Col. James Montgomery |
Steven
Smith, site manager for Fort King
George Historic Site in 2013 when the
Picket wrote about the town’s burning, said Montgomery “wanted to make a
political statement. Here was a town built on the backs of slaves.”
Montgomery ordered Col. Robert Gould Shaw and the famed 54th Massachusetts
Infantry to participate. While Shaw didn’t mind the looting to help resupply
his troops, he opposed setting the town to torch. He apparently relented under
threat of court-martial.
The 2nd South Carolina Volunteers was largely comprised of
freed slaves, while the 54th Massachusetts had many freedmen
and business professionals.
The
54th Massachusetts was in the area to recruit freed slaves,
destroy Southern crops and take out Confederate assault works.
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| Scene from "Glory" shows Federal troops arriving |
Sullivan
says while the Strain building’s interior was lost to fire set by Union troops,
the exterior walls held up. Most of the town was destroyed, including virtually
all the waterfront.
Darien
was slow to rebound from the war, and the timber industry for decades largely replaced
the rice-based economy.
It found new use as grocery, hardware store
Around
1870, Adam Strain, a Civil War veteran of the 5th Georgia Cavalry, purchased
and restored the building.
Sullivan
wrote in McIntosh Life: “Strain utilized his building in a variety of ways from
the 1870s through the 1890s. He specialized in groceries, dry goods and
hardware, as well as operating a prosperous ship chandlery to furnish the
numerous sailing vessels frequenting the ports at Darien and Doboy Island to
load cargoes of raw timber and processed lumber.
An 1885
insurance map indicated the building was a general store with sleeping rooms
upstairs.
Strain’s two
sons, William H. Strain and Robert A. Strain, assumed ownership of the business
after their father’s death in 1897, renaming it Adam Strain’s Sons.”
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1890 Sanborn insurance map shows Strain
building at SE corner of Screven and Broad |
The Strains put a new wood framing inside the building. It currently
supports the existing second floor and is independent of the tabby. “It was an
upgrade of the building at the time,” said Fenwick, the preservation
consultant.
Wilson likens
it to a building within a building.
At some point over the years, it was used
to store antiques and house or produce shoes. “There were hundreds of
children’s boots and shoes all over the place,” Savic said. She estimates the
building has not been used for about 50 years and what remains inside dates
since the Civil War.
The
annex served as a bank from 1913 and 1961 and until recently was the site of
law offices.
As
for the larger building, it was sold from the family estate after the Strain
brothers died in the 1920s and was used primarily as a commercial warehouse and
other uses described above.
By
then, Darien’s timber fortunes had almost ceased to exist and the town turned
to fishing and other small industries.
'The building means so much'
Over
the years, town residents and those who moved away lobbied for the boarded-up Strain
Building to find new use and jump-start more activity downtown.
“The
building means so much to so many people,” says Mandy Harrison, executive
director of the Darien-McIntosh County Chamber of Commerce. “People get their
prom and wedding photos taken there.”
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| Strain interior (Landmark Preservation) |
The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation continued to advocate that it be kept and restored. “Raising public awareness of the development threat to the building
holds promise to galvanize local and state-wide commitment to broker a
reasonable resolution for this iconic structure.”
A 2009 report by a planning group said Darien considered the Strain "an important historic resource and is urgently working to ensure its preservation." The price tag for buying, stabilizing and restoring the building was estimated at $2 million. Nothing came of it at that time.
Meanwhile, the
Savics -- who maintain two businesses in Marietta -- were longtime visitors to St.
Simons and would occasionally stop by Darien. They fell in love with its homes
and history. They made several offers to the property owner but
could not agree to terms.
Last summer, the then-city manager said a local resident had filed a safety complaint; an inspection by a hired structural engineer found the building to have
extensive wear and damage and to be uninhabitable, the Darien News reported. The
engineer suggested it be demolished.
The situation came to a head in July 2019 after the city issued a demolition permit and orange barrels were put in front of the building. The demolition request was made on behalf of the Strain owner, the newspaper reported.
“I was pretty sure the wrecking ball was coming in 24 hours,” said
Wilson, once chairman of the McIntosh County Historic Preservation
Commission. She now lives in Athens, Ga.
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| Downtown has grown since this view of the Strain (Courtesy of Kit Sutherland) |
At
some the point, the order was postponed. It was clear no one wanted to see a
huge part of the town’s history gone. (The Picket reached out to the current city manager but received no reply.)
The
Savics eventually reached a deal with the owner. They will spend several times that in stabilizing, repairing and
transforming the building into an attractive beacon.
“A
good wind storm could probably knock it down,” Savic told the Darien News in
early February.
What couple has planned for the Strain
As
of mid-April, the Savics were waiting for final engineering plans for the
project. It’s possible stabilization work can begin by May 1 and continue for
three to six months.
While
interior structural elements are there, contractors will stabilize walls,
rebuild some tabby areas and then place new stucco on the exterior.
“Everything
that is usable will be taken out and stored during the restoration process.
Everything that is usable will be put back in,” said Savic.
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| The building was full of boxes, shoes and more (Landmark Preservation) |
The couple
wants the Strain building to meet requirements for the National Register of
Historic Places and they will pursue economic incentives, including federal and
state tax credits, available for such preservation.
Given
the current look of the building interior, the Savics are planning for the
Strain to have a post-Civil War feel.
They
expect the Strain will have retail space, “some sort of businesses where people can gather,
community space. Part of it might be an event space.”
Town's story is bigger than the Civil War
The
Savics are thinking of using the annex for a maritime museum, emphasizing
Darien’s timber, cotton and rice past, and perhaps its small shrimping
industry. Among a handful of museums in the area is one dedicated to the
burning of the town during the Civil War, but it is not fully staffed.
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| 1921 photo includes Strain building at far left (Courtesy of Kit Sutherland) |
Kit
Stebbins Sutherland, a retired historic preservation planning
consultant living in Atlanta, grew up in Darien and owns a house lot near the
Strain building.
She
believes the story of Darien should go beyond its early days and the Civil War.
She is particularly interested in the second heyday of the town after the end
of slavery.
The main commercial activity
used to be in an west-east direction, following the Altamaha River and other
tributaries to the Atlantic Ocean. Construction of Interstate 95 to the
west forever changed Darien, Sutherland argues.
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| Blessing of fleet in 1973, Strain building in back (Courtesy of Kit Sutherland) |
Traffic was diverted to U.S. 17 (which runs north-south) in the early 1970s and
much of the eastern side of town was demolished to handle the U.S. 17 widening,
Sutherland told the Picket.
The
other down side, she says, is that Darien was basically bypassed when that
section of I-95 opened.
Sutherland
wants the area – which touts its affordability relative to other coastal
communities -- to have better schools and economic opportunities and a more
proactive and progressive approach to preservation and growth.
She laments the loss of
what the downtown used to look like -- its benches, awnings and trees. “It is a
very pedestrian unfriendly streetscape.”
A belief that project will provide big boost
To
be sure, there is growth occurring in Darien. Near the Strain are fish and
Mexican restaurants, a produce market, wine shop and other retail.
High-end
condos going up along the waterfront have a colonial Spanish look. While
increased investment in Darien was welcome, the look is not pleasing to
everyone; critics believe the style detracts from a classic Darien waterfront
aesthetic.
The
approval of the design brought “out the inner preservationists,” Wilson said.
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| Stabilization is expected to start soon (Landmark Preservation) |
The
Savics, meanwhile, are in it for the long haul. They have a home on nearby
Union Island and eventually will live in the area for much of the year.
Harrison,
with the chamber of commerce, says Darien is on the way up.
“This is a place
where you can come slow down. We have a lot of ecotourism and historical
tourism,” she says. “Everybody who comes here falls in love. You get out of the
rat race and into calmness.”
(July 11 update: Stabilization has yet to begin. A permit has been acquired but power lines need to be relocated and steel fabrication for the work completed.)
