The Story of Olde Harbour Inn
From wharf warehouses to a Standard Oil depot to a blue-jean factory and finally a beloved inn — the walls of Olde Harbour Inn have witnessed more than a century of Savannah's riverfront life.
Olde Harbour Inn is among the oldest inns in Savannah's historic district, and the story of this coastal gem dates back to when the original stone foundation of the building was laid.
The site was first home to wharf warehouses and storage buildings owned chiefly by the Johnson and Jones families. After several City Council debates over the docks and wharves, those original buildings were removed between 1888 and 1889. In December 1889, the Savannah Morning News & Evening Press reported that new construction had begun: "Dennis J. Murphy is raising a three-story building under the bluff, which will extend from River Street to Factor's Walk… Tide Water Oil Company has already leased two floors of the new building."
By March 1890, the paper noted the three-story brick building was finished for the Tide Water Oil Company at a cost of $2,500. Then, in 1892, a raging fire swept the mostly wooden warehouses at the east end of Factors Walk. Despite a quick response, the building was a total loss. Headlines on January 3, 1892 read: "Bay Street's Big Blaze — Five Hundred barrels of oil and the building is burned." Remarkably, no lives were lost, and the Oil Company resolved to rebuild at once.
The rebuilt structure used more than 730,000 bricks — making the building flame-resistant at last.
After the fire, Savannah's leaders required new bluff-side buildings to be made of stone or brick. The brick used here came from a new process by Savannah's "Liberty Brick Company," hailed as a great step forward in construction standards. Shortly after, Tidewater Oil became part of Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust, occupying the building until 1907 and storing barrels of "Guardian Oil" — a high-tech kerosene — throughout. To this day, the Inn's wooden beams are repainted regularly to cover oil stains that soaked into them more than a century ago.
When Standard Oil left in 1907, the building sat vacant for more than 20 years. In 1930, the Alexander Brothers Company — a blue-jean and overall factory — moved in and operated until 1980. A complete renovation followed in 1985, and the building reopened as the Olde Harbour Inn in 1987.
In December 1991, HLC Hotels, Inc. — a Savannah-owned and operated management company — purchased Olde Harbour Inn as the first property in its collection of upscale historic inns, the Historic Inns of Savannah. The collection also includes The Marshall House, The Eliza Thompson House, The East Bay Inn, The Gastonian, and The Kehoe House.
Stay inside the history
Book a suite in a building that has watched Savannah's riverfront change for over a century.