Elbert Square was laid out in 1801, during Savannah's westward expansion, on the western edge of the city and named for Samuel Elbert, a Revolutionary War soldier, sheriff of Chatham County and governor of Georgia. Its ward and Liberty Ward, laid out in 1799, were narrower than the standard ward, fitted into the strip of land left on the western margin of the town common. In the 1930s Montgomery Street was straightened to carry U.S. Highway 17, the Atlantic coastal highway, straight through the city. The roadwork cut through Elbert and Liberty squares and took Franklin Square at the street's north end, which was lost in 1935. Only strips of grass marked Elbert and Liberty.
The Savannah Civic Center, completed in 1972 before the city had a historic district ordinance, then took parts of Elbert and Jackson wards and built over much of what was left of Elbert Square, and closed streets of the grid. What remains of the square is a strip of grass on Montgomery Street, on the Civic Center's west side.
Franklin Square was restored in the mid-1980s, and Ellis Square, under a parking garage since the 1950s, reopened in 2010. On 27 June 2024 the city council voted to remove the 9,700-seat Martin Luther King Jr. Arena, keep the Johnny Mercer Theatre, and restore as much of the Oglethorpe Plan on the site as feasible, departing from a 2019 plan to remove the whole complex. Demolition of the arena began in August 2026.
Getting there
32.0769, -81.0976
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