Photo courtesy MPC This 1955 map of East Savannah shows the proximity of Pine Gardens to the shipyard where the Liberty ships were built. At the top of the photo are the six "ways" where the ships were built then launched into the river. Directly across President Street from Pine Gardens is the site of Riverside Gardens, another housing project that has since been demolished. The road running beside Riverside Gardens, originally Shipyard Road, is now Wahlstrom Road.

Long before container ships put Savannah on the maritime map, another kind of ship had a huge impact here — not only for our ports but also for a country at war.

Liberty ships — the name given quickly constructed wartime cargo freighters — are widely credited with turning the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II.

The six-year battle pitted German U-boats and aircraft against Allied merchant shipping, as the Germans attempted to establish a blockade that would keep necessary supplies from reaching the Allied troops.

From the beginning, the battle took a heavy toll — in all, nearly 3,000 Allied cargo ships were lost.

To replace them, 18 American shipyards were pressed into service between 1941 and 1945, building more than 2,700 Liberty ships to keep supplies and equipment flowing to the troops.

In Savannah, Southeastern Shipbuilding took up the cause, launching its first Liberty ship, the SS James Oglethorpe, in November 1942.

Recruiting thousands of workers to the area, the shipyard had an immediate need for housing adjacent to its operation on the Savannah River. In 1941, the company purchased three undeveloped tracts totaling more than 100 acres in the area of President Street Extension and Pennsylvania Avenue, less than half a mile from the shipyard.

The plan, Southeastern president W. C. Crowley told the Savannah Morning News in May of that year, was to partner with the city and federal government “to build a village that will not only be a model for Savannah, but for the entire country.”

By 1942, construction had begun on several neighborhoods within the tracts.

Seventy years later, the shipyard is gone, as are most of the neighborhoods. Only Pine Gardens, with its 500-plus houses, remains intact, a reminder of Savannah’s shipbuilding war effort.

National Register project

Retired engineer Charles Varner grew up in Pine Gardens, as did Daisy Harrison and Dolly Jeffers. Patricia Lennox Jenkins has lived there for almost 40 years. In 1994, the friends formed the Pine Gardens Neighborhood Association and, several years later, began exploring the possibility of having Pine Gardens placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“We felt the neighborhood qualified because of its connection to the shipyard and the Liberty ships,” Jenkins said.

The group spent years collecting information and, with the help of Daves Rossell, professor of architectural history at the Savannah College of Art and Design, submitted the first formal application to the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources in 2010. That application came back, with the state indicating more documentation was needed.

A second attempt in 2012 — after a full decade of research — appears to have been the charm.

In a letter to the neighborhood association in October of last year, the state indicated the nomination would go before the Georgia National Register Review board this year.

“The National Register staff has reviewed the additional information submitted in support of a National Register nomination … and we believe the district meets the criteria for listing in the National Register and has been documented to National Register standards,” the letter stated.

The nomination is expected to go before the state review board in August. Once approved, it will take 12-18 months for national approval.

“I know that seems like a long time off,” Jenkins said. “But we’ve been working on this so long, we feel like we’re on the home stretch.

“We’re really proud we’ve come this far.”

A group effort

Jenkins credited Varner, now retired and living on Hilton Head Island, with doing the lion’s share of the research on the project.

“Charles has put an unbelievable amount of time and research skill into this,” she said. Varner also set up a website on the project to get the word out.

The group solicited additional help from the Historic Preservation Department of the Chatham County-Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission.

“We can get involved in many ways — providing information and education,” said Sarah Ward, director of the MPC department.

Ward spoke to the Pine Gardens Neighborhood Association last March, explaining what it means to have an historic designation, as well as the benefits and steps involved.

She also explained the difference between a listing on the National Register Historic District and a designated local historic district.

“Being placed on the National Register of Historic Places is an honorific designation identifying the area as having historic significance,” Ward said. “It’s not as restrictive as a local historic district, but neither is it as protective.”

For example, a National Register designation does not prohibit demolition and places no restrictions on alteration.

That’s not to say it has no significant advantages, Ward said in her presentation.

“Being placed on the National Register signifies the neighborhood’s buildings are worthy of preservation,” she said, adding that properties may be eligible for rehabilitation tax incentives and could qualify for federal grants when available.

Ward, with MPC intern Emily Dawson, also helped the neighborhood association put together a brochure on the architectural history of Pine Gardens, complete with maps and photos.

More than shipbuilding

While its historically significant connection to the men and women who built Savannah’s Liberty ships may be the primary reason Pine Gardens qualifies for the National Register, other features also factor in.

Laid out in a grid, the neighborhood featured 520 parcels for single-family homes, as well as 12 business spaces, two churches, a school and a firehouse, making it the first planned community in Savannah to include amenities such as a commercial center.

The architecture of the modest neighborhood is typical of the style of World War II, its single family houses — known as Victory Cottages — were built to be sturdy, lasting safe havens for families who helped support the war effort.

Designed by DeYoung and Moscowitz from New York, two types of homes were built, smaller units for unskilled laborers and larger ones for skilled workers.

According to a 1941 article in the Savannah Morning News, the smaller homes cost on average $3,000 to $3,500 to build and the payments were approximately $20.18 per month. The larger homes cost around $4,000 to build making payments around $22.87 a month.

The designs of the houses — each of which was centered on a 60-by-100-foot lot — reflected the economics, material shortages and technological advancements of the era, according to Varner’s research. To keep costs down, basements, second stories, additional bathrooms and formal dining rooms were eliminated from the plans.

In addition to the houses in Pine Gardens, a commercial area was built that housed two grocery stores, a bar, a “five and dime,” soda shop, beauty parlor, barber shop, package shop and gas station.

The Pine Gardens Firehouse was built in 1943, the Church of the Nazarene in 1954, Riverside Baptist Church in 1953 and Eli Whitney School in 1953.

While the businesses no longer exist, the firehouse, both churches and the school building remain.

Old-fashioned neighborhood

Mary Anne Williams Rosenberg settled into Pine Gardens as a young bride of 19. Forty-five years later, she is still in the same house with no interest in going anywhere else.

“There’s an integrity to our neighborhood that you just don’t see much anymore,” she said. “There are multiple generations here. From the beginning, this has been the kind of old-fashioned, family-oriented neighborhood where everybody knows your business and likes you anyway.

“When I moved here, no one locked their doors, our children walked to school and rode their bikes everywhere. If they fell off and skinned a knee, they could run to the closest mom.”

Recreation was a huge part of neighborhood life, with several Pine Gardens baseball teams making it to the Little League World Series playoffs, Jenkins said.

“Everyone was involved in sports and PTA, and, if you needed a cup of sugar or a can of peas to finish dinner, you just went next door,” she added.

It’s that long-lasting camaraderie — as much as its historical significance — that makes Pine Gardens special to those who grew up or raised their families there, Jenkins said.

And it’s why the 10-year, all-volunteer effort to honor a neighborhood hasn’t faltered and is finally coming to fruition.

“We’ve always known Pine Gardens was unique,” Jenkins said. “It will be nice to have that acknowledged in all the way up in Washington.”

Shipyard brought thousands to town

Savannah’s Southeastern Shipbuilding Corp. existed for only four years, but during those years — among the most crucial in U.S. history — it was the city’s largest employer.

The company was formed in 1941 to build Liberty ships exclusively for the U.S. Navy.

The shipyard was built along the river in East Savannah, near what is now the intersection of Wahlstrom Road and President Street Extension.

On Nov. 20, 1942, the SS James Oglethorpe “slid down the ways” at Southeastern and into the river, marking the launch of the first Liberty Ship built in Savannah.

Through the years, the Savannah shipyard built 88 Liberty Ships, employed 46,766 Americans and paid out $112 million in payroll, all of which went back into Savannah’s economy.

While the shipyard closed at the end of the war, the majority of those who had come to work there and put down roots in East Savannah stayed on to find other work. Many of them found jobs at Union Bag, the paper mill on the city’s Westside that is now International Paper.

The shipyard brought Lynette Lewis Williams’ parents from Atlanta to Savannah, where her father worked as a welder.

“I was really too young to understand the significance of what he was doing,” she said. “But my mother understood.”

Much later, after her parents died, a grown Williams was going through the attic in her mother’s house when she found a treasure trove of memorabilia related to her father’s job during the war.

“My mother kept everything — from newspaper clippings and copies of the company magazine, the ‘Sou’easter,’ to pay stubs,” she said.

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Currently that's a sad, impoverished neighborhood consisting of small, relatively undesirable homes. Will this designation help to improve the living conditions or the halt spread of blight which has encroached from the Pennsylvania Avenue drug corridor? I admire the efforts these former residents and outsiders have made on behalf of a neighborhood where few, if any of the people making this effort actually live. Will this spur interest in reinvestment or just slow the natural succession of another old Savannah subdivision where people are afraid to reside? There needs to be a plan in place to move Pine Gardens beyond its sorry state and allow its proximity to the islands and downtown to become an asset.

I find it disturbing that a group of people have spent 10 years to get a marginally significant neighborhood reviewed for historic status. Meanwhile, a half-dozen convicted sex offenders have moved into the neighborhood. That's nearly one on every other block even though a school is less than a mile away. I live in Pine Gardens and went to a neighborhood association meeting once. Mayor Edna Jackson was there. When asked if Pine Gardens would see a revitalization similar to Savannah Gardens, she responded "God Willing". Everyone at the meeting just nodded and repeated her statement. One resolution would be to make a plan that penalizes landlords for renting to felons or who's tenants are convicted of drug related crimes. Rental tenants by design don't have a stake in the neighborhood and should be chosen very carefully. The quality of the neighborhood will improve once the landlords start renting to quality, long-term tenants who pass a background check.