Light On The Past

The Importance of Preservation

I can remember when I told my father that I was going to Graduate School for a Masters of Fine Arts in Historic Preservation. The first thing he asked me was what was Historic Preservation. I tried to explain to him that I was going to school to learn how to save old buildings. Not just on an intellectual basis but with hands on knowledge. His response to my explanation was “Why would you want to do that? Why would you want to live in an old house when you could have a brand new one with no problems?”

Where was I to go with a comment like that? There are so many reasons. The most obvious is saving our history. Imagine if there was no Louvre, no Pyramids of Egypt, what if the United States White house had been replaced by a Mac Mansion because new was better, easier. Think of all of the wonderful houses in this nation that have been saved because people cared about the history of those places.

Just recently I went to visit a friend in Virginia who works for Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home. How great it was to be learning not only about Jefferson, but about architecture, gardening, and what it was like to live in the early 19th century. Thank goodness, Monticello was saved, just as on Tybee Island the Lighthouse has been saved. Not only was our Lighthouse saved, thanks to the hard work of all of our volunteers over the years, but all of the support buildings have been saved as well. We can now show and tell the complete story of the Light Keepers on Tybee Island. Speaking of volunteers, we still need plenty, so if you’re interested please give us a call at 912-786-5801.

Many people come to Tybee Island just to see the Lighthouse and stay to eat lunch or spend and evening at a local hotel. If the Lighthouse wasn’t here those people probably would not visit. We also employ a number of local people at the store, and to manage and clean the site. All of these dollars go directly back to Tybee Island.

There are other important reasons for preservation, too. First, preservation is green. Often you don’t have to use half as many of the materials to restore a building as you do to build new, yet you do have to hire just as many people to get the work done. It’s also, in most cases, cheaper to save a building then to pay to tear it down and build new. Sometimes you can even move these buildingsand save them in a cost effective way. Thanks to Mike Hosti the Tybee Island Historical Society is going to be able to save a raised cottage by moving it to our property next to the Lighthouse. This will be one more building saved – one more teaching tool that we can use to tell the story of Tybee Island. We intend to restore and interpret the house in such a way as to give visitors one more experience of what it was like to stay on Tybee in a raised cottage in the 1920’s.

Thanks to preservation and the sensitivity of Tybee’s citizens we have a unique island and many of our historic buildings are left. We’re not another Miami Beach with high-rises as far as the eye can see – just one more of the many advantages of historic preservation.

Thanks,
Sarah

What would you like to hear about next month? Send me an email and let me know by February 15th – just be sure to put the story idea in the subject line and send it to: tybeelighthouse@yahoo.com.

Light on the Past

with Sarah Jones

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I remember one particular trip down to Tybee after I started going out with my husband.  It was one night after we had eaten at his family’s restaurant and we were headed down to the beach.  We were driving down Highway 80 and we crossed over a street named Jones.

Trying to kid him I asked him jokingly if the street was named after him.  My jaw dropped when he said “No, it was named after my great uncle.”  I had never met anyone who had a street named after their family before.

This got me thinking on how many of the other streets on Tybee could be traced back to current Tybee families. The answer is that just about all of them except for the numbered ones can be. When I was hunting in the Society’s archives for something to write about this month I thought back to the streets and thought I’d give it a try.

Since I was running out of time, (sorry Cyndi, I will try not to wait until the last minute next month) my research time was limited.

My first resource was to ask some of the locals in the office, the locals in the office being Beth Hodges and Bonnie Hires. We basically decided that the numbered streets running east to west were called streets and the numbered streets running north to south were called avenues.

There are a lot of street signs that are for the same roads that read differently so this being the case I will stick with the above rule. Please if you know something about the streets that is not in this article let me know and I will add it to my database.  There is still a lot of research to do.

TYBEE STREETS and For Whom They Are Named:

Butler Avenue – Named for E. George Butler, Mayor 1922-1925
Jones Avenue – Named for Ronald R. Jones. Mayor of Tybee from 1940-1944
Miller Avenue – Named for Gordon Miller, Local Businessman
Lovell Avenue – Named for William S. Lovell, City Councilman 1950’s
Pulaski Avenue – Named for Casmir Pulaski, Revolutionary War Hero
Lewis Avenue – Named for J.C. Lewis, Mayor 1933-1934
Bright Avenue – Named for O.E. Bright, Mayor 1934-1938
Chatham Avenue – Named for Chatham County
Tybrisa Street – Named for Tybrisa Pier (Note: the locals still call it 16th Street)
Izlar Street – Named for Ernest Barton Izlar Sr., Local Business man

These are just a few of the major streets and many of these are still local names that have a very strong history on Tybee. What would you like to hear about next month? Send me an email and let me know – just be sure to put the story idea in the subject line and send it to tybeelighthouse@yahoo.com