The Armstrong Inn

Project by: Pauline Adams, Dumaine Babcock, and Renua Ciwa-Amu

The Armstrong Inn headquarters on 554 E. Taylor Street has an entrance on E. Broad Street surrounded with several kept gardens of coastal plants and flowers alongside some home grown vegetables. The front door is ornamented with two flags, one Canadian and one from United States, gracefully blowing in the wind on either side of an old-fashioned lantern light above the small Georgian style portico. The building itself is a National Certified Historic Property that was restored by William and Monique Armstrong, a dynamic duo of non-native Savannah residents that were taken with the Southern Charm they found in Savannah while working on a film called The Legend of Bagger Vance, directed by Robert Redford.

Painted landscapes by William Armstrong

William Armstrong hails from Newark, New Jersey and is best known for his low-country landscapes, figurative painting and cutting-edge scenic work. He has worked with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee and Woody Allen. The work Armstrong did on set included painting backgrounds to building actual sets, some of which were featured in Architectural Digest. After spending several decades working on films and living in New York City, him and his Canadian wife, Monique, decided to resettle somewhere with a slower pace, warmer weather, and sweeter tea. While searching the city for a place to settle in, Monique Armstrong spent her time looking for more historic buildings and stumbled upon the “complete disaster” of a building on E. Broad. The location had previously been abandoned for 25 years.

The building itself had survived several risqué occupations since it’s initial establishment in the early 1800’s, such as a speakeasy shot bar during prohibition and a sort of brothel as well as a grocery store beforehand. With the hired help of workers who were part of the construction crew on the set of The Legend of Bagger Vance, the couple dived straight into a year long restoration in the beginning of the year 2000. Down to the plaster crown molding of the parlor, they renovated the building to “probably exceed its previous splendor”. After fully restoring the main building they chose to make their residence, they added a charming carriage house in the same historic design which became a separate living space for visiting friends and family. Soon after completing this job, other historic properties were acquired by the couple and renovated all across the historic district of Downtown Savannah. After rebuilding these historic properties and not being able to sell them during the recession of the early 2000’s, the couple decided to start renting them out before Monique decided to reestablish their collection of locations as a running bed and breakfast business. Monique began running her Inn business while William continued to paint and sell his work. In his own words, “An artist never retires.”

William had been to the South before, when he was living in Alabama while he was serving in the Army. He swore he “would never return to the South again”. However, when learning more about the history of Savannah and the style, he had a change of heart. He spoke of his neighborhood on E. Broad St. as having become generally “more gentrified” than it was before, as many of the buildings were abandoned and very close to Sectioned housing for poorer communities. Residents and locals of the other parts of downtown savannah still to this day generally think of the neighborhood as not very safe. Coming from New York and other larger cities in the North East, Armstrong was used to keeping an eye out for himself and his propertyand decided to make his home on there. According to him, he has had a very peaceful time living on East Broad.

Though Armstrong was not around for the establishment of the neighborhood itself, he spoke of some of the understanding and research he had on the public perception of E. Broad and how it had changed over the years. With more and more older properties being acquired and restored on the Northern stretch of the street, the area where the Armstrong Inn complacently sits across from a large school is generally thought of as wealthier with older residents. Because of this, the area is still frequent to attempted robberies and is still thought of as perhaps not particularly safe, although William states that it isn’t the residents of the neighborhood doing the robbing, but rather people from other parts of Savannah that come to pillage the wealthy. Armstrong pointed out that when they moved to this location, acquaintances from around town were surprised to learn of where he was staying. He noted that most would not go further East than Price street if they valued their “wallets and their lives”. When discussing the area with another employee of the Armstrong Inns, he agreed that the neighborhood had a bad reputation that it perhaps did not deserve, and in the entire year he had lived in the neighborhood he had never had any trouble with his neighbors.

This employee, Rodney Merriman, didn't allow us to take picture of or record him, but did agree to speak with us about his background and experiences at the Armstrong Inn. A 47-year-old native to Miami, Florida, he was not new to the South when he moved to Savannah, even though he had only lived in this particular neighborhood for a little over a year. Forced to fend for himself at age 16, Rodney spoke of having to become a man and learn how to live by himself at a very early age after leaving his parents home. He feels that this is what equipped him with the skills he employs during his service at the Armstrong inns. His parents were native to Jamaica, and he still was close to many ties outside of the country. However, stranded in Downtown Miami as a teenager, Rodney had seen some tough times and knew what it was like to rough it by himself. Comparatively, he stated, what is commonly considered “rough” in Savannah has got nothing on things he has seen. Rodney spoke of initially moving to Savannah for a change of pace and career, and never thought of the new area as dangerous. He lives only a few short blocks away from the Armstrong Inn on Price Street, and spoke of only one complaint that he does not put particular blame on the neighborhood for: his bike being stolen on his birthday.

The bike incident was especially displeasing not only because it was his main mode of transportation and it was stolen on his birthday, but also because it happened to be how Rodney acquired his job with the Armstrongs originally. Rodney spoke of his connection to the Armstrongs as somewhat “meant to be”, as Monique simply stopped him on the street to inquire about the basket on his bike. After offering to build her one for her bike, he was later asked to complete more household jobs for the couple, such as build a new cement patio. Soon, he was in charge of maintenance of all of the Inns around downtown and doing all sorts of jobs for the Armstrongs, including walking their two dogs. In fact, we were only allowed to speak to Rodney for a short while because he had to fulfill that duty, and he thanked us for taking an interest in his story while walking out the door with two merrily jumping canines.

The painter later old us of the time he built a small white picket fence on the pavement in the front of his property; a pavement that he had laid himself after his request to the powers that be to build one for him was refused. He suggested that the property was not considered important enough for the city to bother laying a sidewalk for, but that when he had the small fence built to contain his seasonal vegetable patch (currently pumpkins) he received complaints, and was asked to replace the small inoffensive fence with “perhaps a wrought iron one instead.” The artist refused, as he felt that the picket fence was more historically appropriate to the neighborhood and the building, as opposed to wrought iron, which the residents of earlier times would not have been able to afford. The Artist mentions that that section of East Broad had only just been included in a few of the tourist trolley tours, and hardly any of them mentioned any of the less pleasant or flowery facts things about the past of the neighborhood. Although the location and its surroundings have been nicely refurbished and built up to represent the image of Savannah the city would like to promote, the ideals of the inhabitants remain the same.