Jones Street, Savannah's Most Photographed Block
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Jones Street is often described as Savannah's most beautiful street. It is certainly its most photographed.
Visitors come for the arching live oaks, the red brick paving, the iron balconies, and the Spanish moss that softens the light beneath the canopy. They pause for a photograph, walk a block or two, and continue exploring the Historic District. Most never discover what makes Jones Street memorable.
This is not an article about photographing Jones Street. It is about experiencing it. About the people who built it, the history preserved behind its facades, and what the street feels like at six in the morning, long before the visitors arrive. It is also about the first house ever built here, a house that still welcomes guests today.
The First House on Jones Street
The first house on Jones Street was built in 1847 at what is now the Eliza Thompson House. But to understand why that matters, it helps to understand why Jones Street feels so different from much of Savannah's Historic District.
Jones Street runs east to west across six of Savannah's historic wards. Unlike many of the city's best-known streets, it has no square directly fronting it. Oglethorpe's famous grid places the nearest squares a block north and a block south, helping create the quieter, residential character that still defines the street today.
The house at 5 West Jones was commissioned by Savannah merchant Joseph Thompson and completed in the year of his death. His widow, Eliza Margaret Thompson, remained in the home and managed the family's affairs, giving the property the name it carries today.
As Jones Street developed through the 1840s and 1850s, it attracted merchants, investors, and prominent Savannah families who helped transform it into one of the city's most desirable residential addresses. Among them was Eliza Ann Jewett, a prolific real estate developer whose projects contributed significantly to the eastern portion of the street. By the end of the century, successive waves of construction had created the elegant collection of townhouses, row houses, and private residences that visitors admire today.
Architect John S. Norris, whose work includes both the Green-Meldrim House and the Andrew Low House, also left his mark on the area. His designs helped shape the architectural character of Jones Street and the surrounding neighbourhood during Savannah's period of greatest growth.
What visitors photograph today is the result of more than forty years of development, followed by decades of preservation that protected the street's distinctive appearance. The first house on Jones Street simply happened to be where that story began.
Why Jones Street Feels Different
Most travel guides describe Jones Street as one of the most beautiful streets in Savannah. What they often miss is why it feels so different from much of the Historic District.
The answer begins with scale. Despite its reputation, Jones Street was built primarily as a residential street rather than a grand civic space. Most of the buildings are townhouses and row houses rather than mansions, creating a sense of intimacy that larger Savannah landmarks sometimes lack.
The street's layout contributes to that feeling. Without a square directly fronting it, Jones Street feels removed from the busiest visitor routes while remaining only a short walk from Savannah's major attractions. The result is a street that feels lived in rather than staged.
The physical details matter too. The historic brick paving on the western half, iron balconies, mature live oaks, and canopy of Spanish moss all contribute to the atmosphere that visitors immediately recognise. Together they create one of the most photographed streets in Savannah, but also one of the easiest places to imagine what daily life in the city might have felt like generations ago.
That combination of beauty, scale, and residential character is what continues to set Jones Street apart.
A Day on Jones Street
At 6 in the morning, the brick is still cool from the night. The moss hangs motionless. If you are staying at 5 West Jones, this is when you hear the house wake up: the creak of old timber, the sound of the courtyard fountain, the first birds in the oaks. The light arrives sideways through the shutters and turns the wood floors amber.
By 8am, the canopy has done what it does: softened the light into something even and directionless. This is the hour everyone comes for photographs, though it is less a specific hour than a condition. Jones Street in the morning holds light the way good architecture holds it - reluctantly, and for longer than you expect.
By 11:30, the line outside Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room at 107 West Jones has formed. Sema Wilkes took over the boardinghouse here in 1943 and served family-style Southern food until her death in 2002 at 95. The menu - fried chicken, sweet potato soufflé, cheese grits, biscuits - has not meaningfully changed. The queue forms before the doors open and extends down the pavement. It is not a place for the reservation-holding crowd. It is a place for the patient.
By 3 in the afternoon, the heat has settled. In spring and summer, this means the shutters on the upper floors are closed and Jones Street is nearly empty. A carriage comes through slowly. The cicadas begin. The Spanish moss - which is not Spanish and not moss but a flowering epiphyte of the bromeliad family, Tillandsia usneoides, hangs absolutely still.
By 6pm, the gas lamps come on. Jones Street has them, period fixtures that predate the city’s electrification, and the light shifts from amber to something cooler and steadier. At this hour, the street looks much as it did in 1985, when John Berendt rented an apartment in a carriage house on East Jones Street and began taking the notes that became https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_in_the_Garden_of_Good_and_Evil. The house at 115 East Jones - part of Eliza Ann Jewett’s 1853 row - features in that book as one of Joe Odom’s successive Savannah residences.
By 10 at night, the street is quiet enough to hear your own footsteps on the brick.
The Lane Behind Jone Street
Most visitors never see Jones Lane.
Running behind the homes and townhouses of East Jones Street, this narrow service lane was originally built to support the daily life of the neighbourhood. Carriages, deliveries, and household activity once moved through these rear passages while the elegant façades on Jones Street faced the public world.
Many of the historic carriage houses still survive today, having been adapted into homes, studios, and guest accommodations. Walking the lane offers a different perspective on Jones Street. Less polished, quieter, and more intimate, it reveals the practical side of a neighbourhood that is often admired only from the front.
The Eliza Thompson House's courtyard connects to this quieter side of the block. Early in the morning, before the city fully wakes, the lane and courtyard offer a glimpse of Jones Street that most visitors never experience.
Why Jones Street Photographs so Well
Visit Savannah famously describes Jones Street as one of the most beautiful streets in the city. Spend even a few minutes here and it becomes easy to understand why.
The live oaks form a natural canopy overhead, filtering the light throughout the day. The brick paving adds warmth and texture beneath it. The historic homes sit at a remarkably consistent scale, creating a sense of balance and harmony that photographers instinctively respond to, whether they realise it or not.
Unlike many famous streets, Jones Street was never designed as a tourist attraction. It evolved gradually over decades as a residential address, and that authenticity remains part of its appeal. The architecture feels lived in rather than staged. The proportions feel human. The details reward a slower look.
The result is a street that seems to photograph well from almost every angle. Yet what many visitors remember most is not the photograph itself, but the atmosphere that surrounds it.
The Difference Between Visiting & Staying
You can walk the length of Jones Street in fifteen minutes and take every photograph you came for. The street is genuinely beautiful, and the photographs are worth taking.
But staying on Jones Street offers something different.
The first house ever built on the street is still standing. Today, it operates as the Eliza Thompson House, welcoming guests much as it has welcomed visitors for generations. While day visitors experience Jones Street for a few moments, guests experience it across an entire day: the quiet of the courtyard before sunrise, the changing light beneath the oak canopy, the sound of the fountain in the evening, and the stillness that settles over the street after dark.
The Eliza Thompson House occupies a unique place in the story of Jones Street. Built in 1847 and expanded in 1870, it has witnessed the street's evolution from a new residential address to one of Savannah's most admired historic blocks.
Most visitors leave Jones Street with a photograph. Guests leave with a memory of what it felt like to be there.
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