150 Years of Savannah — Harper's Weekly, 24 February 1883

This handsome original wood engraving, published in Harper's Weekly on 24 February 1883, commemorates one of the great civic celebrations of the American South: the 150th anniversary of the founding of Savannah, Georgia — one of the oldest and most storied cities in the United States.

The full-page illustration presents multiple scenes from the sesquicentennial festivities, centred on the principal oration delivered by Governor Alexander H. Stephens — former Vice President of the Confederate States of America and, by 1883, Governor of Georgia — before a large and distinguished assembly. An inset view captures the interior of the local theatre, richly decorated for the occasion, offering a rare glimpse of Savannah's cultural and architectural life in the Gilded Age.

The celebration honoured the founding of Savannah in February 1733 by General James Edward Oglethorpe, who led the first colonists to the bluffs above the Savannah River — the site known to the Yamacraw people as Yamacraw Bluff — and laid out the city's celebrated grid of squares that survives to this day. Oglethorpe's vision of a planned, egalitarian colony made Savannah one of the most distinctive urban experiments in colonial America, and the sesquicentennial was an occasion to reflect on that legacy with pride and ceremony.

Harper's Weekly, the most widely read illustrated newspaper in the United States, brought the celebrations to a national audience with characteristic thoroughness and draughtsmanship. The Telfair Museums in Savannah hold related historical materials providing further context for the architecture and events depicted.

• Publication: Harper's Weekly, New York
• Date: 24 February 1883
• Subject: Savannah's 150th anniversary — Governor Stephens' oration and theatre interior inset
• Medium: Original wood engraving
• Size: Approximately 26 × 40 cm (11 × 16 inches)
• Scan: 350 dpi
• Condition: Original antique print — age-toning consistent with period. Any slight tears along the edges of the original print will be repaired using acid-free archival tape. No original prints will be sold where there is damage to the principal image area.

A significant piece for collectors of American Southern history, Georgia history, Gilded Age civic life, or Reconstruction era art — and a distinguished addition to any interior.