Wright Square

Wright Square was laid out in 1733 and was originally named for John Percival, Earl of Egmont, who played a large part in founding the Colony of Georgia. Around 1763 its name was changed to honor James Wright, Royal Governor of the Province of Georgia from 1760 to 1782. In the Town Hall that stood on the present site of the Chatham County Courthouse, George Whitefield, a Church of England minister at Savannah, preached to large congregations in the early colonial period. In 1739, Tomo-Chi-Chi, chief of the Yamacraw Indians who befriended the early Georgia colonists, was buried with ceremony in the center of the square, with General Oglethorpe serving as one of the pallbearers. The monument to William Washington Gordon commemorates the founder and first president of Georgia’s earliest railroad, the Central Railroad and Banking Company, an enterprise that greatly promoted the state’s economy. Designed by architects Henry Van Brunt and Frank M. Howe, the monument symbolizes the progress and prosperity of the world through commerce, manufacture, agriculture, and art, and it was completed in 1883.

Savannah, Georgia · United States