Port Horizons is a new travel series, with each edition focusing on a single location to explore how its architecture, makers and communities shape its cultural identity. For the first edition, we explore how Spanish moss, historic squares and a university called SCAD transformed America’s most beguiling Southern city

When you arrive in Savannah, Georgia, the first thing that slows your step is the Spanish moss, laced like silver tinsel through the branches of ancient oaks. It hangs low enough to brush your shoulder as you pass – and, as the locals warn, it often gets stuck in your hair. By late summer it sways in the humid air, softening the geometry of America’s first planned city. Savannah was laid out in 1733 by British general James Oglethorpe, its grid of 22 squares punctuating the streets with fountains, statues and benches, each framed by a patchwork of Colonial, Federal, Gothic Revival and Victorian buildings. Cast-iron balconies curl with vines, verandas sag in the heat, façades wear their history in layers of paint and weather.

Yet perhaps most noticeable are the large-scale Savannah College of Art and Design signs peppered throughout town. Painted on old brick warehouses, lit in neon above façades and stencilled onto doorways are four letters: SCAD. The Savannah College of Art and Design is everywhere, stitched into the city’s fabric like a watermark.

Founded in 1978, the university was the brainchild of Paula Wallace, president of SCAD, who envisioned a new type of art school – one that bridged creativity and professional practice. At a time when most creative colleges left careers to chance, SCAD was deliberately structured as an “art and design university where students are educated as creative professionals from day one – much like a medical school or law school, so that they might be propelled towards lifelong careers”, says Wallace. From its first cohort of 71 students, the school has grown into a global institution of more than 18,500 across Savannah, Atlanta, Lacoste in Provence and an online campus, offering over 100 degree programmes spanning film, fashion, photography, design, architecture, game development and more. Its “unofficial” motto, says Wallace, became “No starving artists”. Today that ethos manifests in infrastructure like SCADpro – an in-house design studio developing briefs for NASA, Gucci and Google – and resources ranging from a casting office to industry-standard production facilities. “Our philosophy is simple,” adds Wallace. “Reimagine with reverence.”

Wallace grew up in Atlanta, the daughter of May and Paul Poetter, a curriculum designer and a Bureau of Labor Statistics employee. By the age of 12 she was giving piano lessons to neighbourhood children, discovering early both her independence and her love for teaching. While working later as an elementary school teacher in Atlanta Public Schools, she became frustrated by what came next for her pupils: “I recognised a chasmic gap in higher education, which was too heavy on abstraction, too light on application,” she recalls. In the 1970s, art schools didn’t speak about careers. “You were left to fend for yourself. Whatever happened after university, that was a black box,” she says. “Not at SCAD. Every course would be designed to meet a professional need, a client’s need.”

Her parents backed the vision, selling their belongings and retirement savings to purchase SCAD’s first building, a derelict 19th-century armoury on Bull Street that became the university’s first classroom. Wallace describes Savannah at the time as “on her deathbed”, with historic structures crumbling, downtown hollowed out and young people leaving. SCAD has since restored more than 70 historic buildings, from depots and schools to warehouses and churches, giving them new life as classrooms, studios and galleries. Walk down Broughton Street, Savannah’s main commercial artery, and the logo can be seen on buildings such as SCAD Trustees Theater and Jen Library – located a few blocks down from Paris Market: an airy, Parisian-inspired concept store that has become a destination for design-minded visitors. Forsyth Park, over 30 acres of lawn and shaded pathways in the Victorian District, hosts Saturday markets, art festivals, and is an ideal place for student projects to spill out under its oaks. The Starland District, once semi-abandoned, now hums with converted dairies, galleries and cafes, many of them run by graduates.

That initial building – Poetter Hall – became the benchmark of it all, and today it houses SCADstory – an immersive, Disney-esque biography of the institution. “So many SCAD buildings have lived many lives,” Wallace says. “Former churches, schoolhouses, private residences, Savannah’s first hospital, first power station and others all transformed by the university through adaptive rehabilitation and upcycled into new purpose.” Vice president of SCAD Savannah, Darrell Naylor-Johnson, frames it as inseparable from the city’s rebirth: “What were once uninspired or abandoned spaces have been turned into vibrant, living models of design and artistry.”

The SCAD Museum of Art epitomises this approach. Sitting on the city’s west side, just a short walk from the riverfront’s Plant Riverside District, the museum is housed in the 1856 Central of Georgia Railway Company depot – once worked by enslaved African Americans. In 2011, it was rescued from ruin and reimagined with alumnus and professor Christian Sottile. More than 70,000 original Savannah grey bricks were paired with an 86-foot glass tower, a soaring modern addition nicknamed the ‘Lantern’. SCAD’s choice to preserve and showcase the bricks is a way of acknowledging the past while embedding it into a space of dialogue and creativity. “This National Historic Landmark is the only surviving antebellum railroad complex in the US,” explains chief curator Daniel S Palmer. “The building’s precious salvaged Savannah grey brick and original heart pine timbers give the museum a vital sense of place and root us to the historic site, yet the brilliant adaptive reuse renovation allows for a state-of-the-art display and experience of art.”

Inside, as many as 20 exhibitions a year bring international artists into conversation with SCAD alumni. In recent months, shows have ranged from a solo show of Rana Begum called Reflection to Davina Semo’s A Gathering of Bells, alumna Summer Wheat’s Fruits of Labor and a group exhibition exploring myths and legends. The museum has just unveiled the world’s first exhibition of garments and other belongings from the late André Leon Talley’s personal collection – a project Talley himself had asked Wallace to oversee.

SCAD’s restoration work extends beyond the museum. The Beach Institute, founded in 1867 as the first school for African Americans in Savannah, was rehabilitated and donated by SCAD to the King-Tisdell Cottage Foundation, a landmark that “thrives as a vital centre for African American arts, culture and history”, says Naylor-Johnson. He adds, “As a Black Southerner, my return to the South – and to Savannah specifically – was influenced by SCAD’s presence. Savannah is a city with a layered and often difficult history, but SCAD has helped reframe that history by restoring neglected spaces, fostering inclusivity, and creating opportunities for global dialogue through art and design. SCAD’s presence demonstrates that the South can be both a guardian of its heritage and a leader in innovation. In doing so, the university has helped position Savannah as a cultural and creative capital, while also challenging historical narratives that excluded voices like mine.”

Savannah’s identity today is inseparable from the university’s cultural footprint. Each autumn, the SCAD Savannah Film Festival draws around 75,000 visitors, regularly attended by Barry Jenkins, Olivia Wilde and Jeremy Irons. Jenkins hired dozens of SCAD students for The Underground Railroad, while Todd Haynes shifted production of May December to Savannah after attending the festival. The city is also home to the Savannah Film Studios, the largest university film studio complex in the country. Spanning 300,000 square feet, it includes an LED volume, a Hollywood-style backlot, and a 17,000-square-foot production design facility. “SCAD has it all. In the School of Film and Acting we have an unwavering commitment to transform every class and student project into a ‘just like Hollywood’ or ‘just like Broadway’ experience,” says Andra Reeve-Rabb, dean of the School of Film and Acting. “At SCAD, students don’t just learn film, they live it.”

The fashion programme is no less visible. Alumnus Christopher John Rogers, winner of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and an LVMH Prize finalist, cut his teeth here; other graduates have gone on to LVMH and Nike. Former Style.com editor Dirk Standen, now SCAD’s dean for the School of Fashion, puts it bluntly: “We bring Paris and London and New York here.” The university recently launched a tailoring course in partnership with Savile Row stalwart Huntsman, embedding professional expertise directly into the curriculum. John Rogers remains closely engaged with SCAD students, while Flora Medina was hired by i-D’s Steff Yotka straight from campus. “It’s literally hand in hand – not only in terms of placing our students or partnering on conferences, but in embedding professional expertise into our curriculum,” says Standen.

Perhaps the clearest sign of SCAD’s embedded nature within Savannah is the number of graduates who stay and build their futures in the city. Leather goods brand Satchel, founded by Elizabeth Seeger, has become a fixture on Liberty Street. “At SCAD we were encouraged to use any and all resources at our fingertips and to think outside of the box to solve problems. Isn’t that entrepreneurship in a nutshell?” she says. 

In the Starland District – now one of Savannah’s trendiest neighbourhoods – alumni have opened cafes, studios and galleries, helping anchor a creative community. Provisions, a hybrid cafe and pantry founded by graduate Nikki Krecicki, has become a downtown hub. Origin Coffee Roasters, launched by another alum, keeps students and locals alike fuelled. Laney Contemporary, run by a SCAD graduate, has established itself as one of the city’s most forward-thinking galleries. Elsewhere, Asher + Rye merges Scandinavian-inspired interiors with a lifestyle store, while jewellery designer Gillian Trask has built a namesake studio for her sculptural silver pieces.

SCAD also runs Gryphon, a tea room housed in a 1926 pharmacy, where students and alumni – like Aahana Tank, who’s studying themed entertainment design and has worked on two SCADpro projects with Universal – serve grits, quiche and sweet tea beneath stained-glass windows. Next door, shopSCAD acts as a storefront and showcase, selling student and alumni-designed works to visitors from around the world.

For Seeger, the appeal of staying is about more than a business opportunity. “I love that Savannah values quality of life,” she adds. “The city is beautiful, the people are lovely and it’s a laidback lifestyle.”

The work of SCAD graduates – whether running cafes, designing jewellery or staging exhibitions – wins awards, pays wages, fills hotel rooms and keeps studios in business. Meanwhile, blockbuster festivals and fashion events translate into production hires, tourist nights and local retail spend. A Tripp Umbach study found SCAD generated $1.3 billion in economic impact for Georgia in the 2023 fiscal year – roughly $1 billion of that attributable to the Savannah area. “Our capital projects employ local construction companies and workers, while our day-to-day operations rely heavily on area vendors, service providers and small businesses,” says Naylor-Johnson. Joe Marinelli, president and CEO of Visit Savannah, agrees: “Without what President Wallace and SCAD have done, it’s hard to imagine the community looking better.”

SCAD shows no sign of slowing down. In the past year alone it has launched new degrees in themed entertainment, cinematography and eyewear design. A Bachelor of Design in applied AI – the first of its kind – is beginning this term, empowering students to “shape intelligent systems with empathy, ethics and artistry”, says Wallace. “We launch new degrees that anticipate market demand – immersive reality, sneaker design, the business of beauty and fragrance.”

Yet for all the scale, her vision remains intimate. She recalls a graduate who returned from India with his wife. “He described Savannah and SCAD as places ‘you want to fold up and put in your pocket, take with you wherever you go’. Our city and university reside in people’s hearts that way, carried with SCAD friends and alumni throughout their lives and careers.”

Nearly five decades after its founding, SCAD has grown into something larger than itself. Its home in Savannah remains unapologetically Southern – “The residents that live in Savannah are some of the most hospitable and welcoming that you’ll find anywhere in the country,” says Marinelli – but now, it’s layered with a new identity. A city of students, makers and dreamers, where the preservation of the past feeds directly into the future.

Photography Phil Dunlop

This article is taken from Port issue 37. To continue reading, buy the issue or subscribe here