SAVANNAH, Ga. — Two small sculptures that spent more than a century tucked away in an attic in downtown Savannah are getting a second life in a college workshop.
The Savannah-Chatham County Public School System pulled the pieces from its Central Office Building at 208 Bull Street, where they had sat since 1901. Both are maquettes, the working models sculptor John Walz made while designing the full-size figures that still look out over Oglethorpe Street from the front of the building. The district needed to clear them out because the building is being planned for a major renovation.
One model shows Demeter, the Greek goddess of the harvest and abundance, and the other shows Athena, goddess of wisdom. On the building itself, the larger Demeter carries a cornucopia full of fruit, and Athena appears lost in thought, pen raised over a tablet.
A Savannah moving company that handles delicate jobs carried the fragile models across town to Savannah Technical College. There, preservation students working under program head Connie Pinkerton will repair and stabilize them, a hands-on lesson in old-fashioned conservation methods on real local artifacts.
When the work is done, the models are expected to go on public view in Massie’s Historic Preservation Gallery.
The Bull Street building has its own history. Architect Henry Urban designed it, and it went up in 1901 to replace the old Chatham Academy, which burned in 1899. Today it houses the school district’s central office, and the restored models will give visitors a closer look at the figures most people only see from the street.
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