Cast Iron, Columbia Square and Colonial Park: A Walk Around Kehoe House
The best walk from Kehoe House starts before you leave the front steps. The house was built in 1892 for William Kehoe, an Irish immigrant who owned one of Savannah's iron foundries, and he used it as a showroom. The exterior stairways, balustrades, window cornices, columns, fences and gates were all cast at his own works, which is an unusual amount of ironwork even for a city that is full of it. Stand on Habersham Street for a minute and look up before you go anywhere.
If your stay falls in Halloween week, our Halloween in Savannah planner has the dates and events. This walk works in any month.
Columbia Square
The house stands at 123 Habersham Street, on Columbia Square, at the quiet end of the Historic District. The square's centerpiece is a fountain often said to be the oldest in Savannah, moved here from the Wormsloe plantation, and it is a good first stop simply because there is usually nobody else at it.
Colonial Park Cemetery
Across Habersham Street lies Colonial Park Cemetery, laid out in 1750 and in use for the city's first century. It holds more than 10,000 burials and fewer than 1,000 markers, which tells you most of what you need to know about Savannah's early years. It closes at dusk, so take it in the late afternoon. The cemetery's fuller story, and the city's other haunts, are on our collection's Ghosts and Haunts of Savannah page.
Kehoe House has its own ghost story, and we are glad to share it with guests who ask. It is on our haunting page.
The House Museums, a Block Away
Within a block of the front door are three of Savannah's house museums: the Davenport House, whose threatened demolition in 1955 started the city's preservation movement, the Owens-Thomas House, and the Sheftall House. Any one of them fills an hour, and together they explain how a Savannah merchant lived in the century before Kehoe built his.
If your visit lines up with the SCAD Savannah Film Festival in late October, Trustees Theater is about three minutes' walk from the house, which makes Kehoe the closest of the four Historic Inns of Savannah to the festival's main screen.
Back for the Parlor Hour
Wine and sweets are served in the parlor from 5 to 7, and cookies arrive in the room each evening. Breakfast the next morning is cooked to order and delivered wherever you would like it, which is the right way to recover from a day on foot. Each of the 13 rooms is named for a Savannah or Georgia figure, so the house keeps telling its own history after you come back in.
Before You Book
Kehoe House is adults only. Parking is included and nearby. If you are traveling with children or a dog, our sister inn East Bay Inn is the one of the four Historic Inns of Savannah that welcomes both.
