Oglethorpe Plan

James Edward Oglethorpe founded the Province of Georgia, and the town of Savannah, on February 11, 1733 (February 1, 1732, according to the Julian calendar in use at the time). The new Georgia colony was authorized under a grant from George II to a group constituted by Oglethorpe as the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America, or simply the Georgia Trustees. The new colony was bounded by the Savannah River on the north and the Altamaha River to the south, while the western boundary reached almost to the Mississippi River and lands claimed by France as part of Louisiana. Not until 1763 did the French formally cede this territory east of the Mississippi to Great Britain,^[1] but Spain still claimed a considerable portion of it. Much of the territory ultimately became British in 1795, when Britain resolved its West Florida boundary dispute with Spain.^[2]

Oglethorpe's plan for settlement of the new colony had been in the works since 1730, three years before the founding of Savannah. The multifaceted plan sought to achieve several goals through interrelated policy and design elements, including the spacing of towns, the layout of towns and eventually their surrounding counties, equitable allocation of land, and limits to growth to preserve a sustainable agrarian economy.^[3]

Definition of “Oglethorpe Plan”

The term “Oglethorpe Plan” has two modern usages, one specific to the town plan for Savannah and another that applies to the general plan for settlement of towns and regions in the Georgia Colony. The specific usage is more common because it applies to the vestige of the original plan that remains in existence to this day in Savannah's historic district. The general usage encompasses the specific usage and more accurately reflects the fact that Oglethorpe’s plan for Georgia was comprehensive, integrated and multilevel.^[4]

Genesis of the Plan

Oglethorpe and close associates, many of whom served with him on a parliamentary committee investigating prison conditions, initially conceived the Georgia colony as a refuge for debtors. The scope was soon broadened to encompass the worthy poor and unemployed of Britain and persecuted Protestants in Europe. In order to sell the merits of the plan to the king, Parliament, and potential benefactors, the Georgia Colony was also promoted for its geopolitical importance and mercantile potential. All of those purposes were described in the charter for the colony approved by the king in 1732.^[5]

Authorities on the plan have argued that Oglethorpe’s core purpose in founding the new colony, unstated in the charter, was to create a model agrarian society that would preserve and nourish fundamental principles of the British nation, principles that Oglethorpe believed were being eroded by urbanization and social disintegration. Oglethorpe’s plan for the Georgia Colony and the design of its towns appears to have been based on tenets of eighteenth-century country party political philosophy as well as humanistic themes of the Age of Enlightenment. That conclusion is based in part on references in promotional tracts written by Oglethorpe as he planned the colony.^[6][7]

The genesis of the Oglethorpe Plan’s unstated political orientation can be traced to the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who formed the country party in the 1670s as a political faction made up of Whigs and Tories who shared a belief that balanced government depends on a fair and sustainable distribution of land ownership. Shaftesbury derived some of his ideas from James Harrington, the English political philosopher who in turn derived his theory from principles articulated by Niccolo Machiavelli.^[8]

Shaftesbury and his protégé, John Locke, founded the Province of Carolina based on those principles. However, by the time Oglethorpe inherited the country party tradition, the British Enlightenment had brought new egalitarian concepts into political discourse. The design of Georgia was based on yeoman family farms in contrast to Carolina, where agrarian power resided with aristocrats and farms were worked by servant and slave classes. Oglethorpe referred to his plan for a slave-free society of small farmers owning equally sized plots of land as “agrarian equality.”^[9]

The genesis of many of the Oglethorpe Plan’s design details can be found in Roman colonial town planning and Renaissance concepts of the ideal city. Authorities on the plan have paid particular attention to the town plan and its system of wards comprising civic and residential blocks arrayed around a central square (see below, “Notable Comments About the Plan”).^[10]

Historical Significance of the Plan

The Oglethorpe Plan was an embodiment of all of the major themes of the Enlightenment, including science, humanism, and secular government. Georgia became the only American colony infused at its creation with Enlightenment ideals: the last of the Thirteen Colonies, it would become the first to embody the principles later embraced by the Founders. Remnants of the Oglethorpe Plan exist today in Savannah, showcasing a town plan that retains the vibrancy of ideas behind its conception.

At the heart of Oglethorpe’s comprehensive and multi-faceted plan there was a vision of social equity and civic virtue. The mechanisms supporting that vision, including yeoman governance, equitable land allocation, stable land tenure, prohibition of slavery, and secular administration, were among the ideas debated during the British Enlightenment. Many of those ideals have been carried forward, and are found today in Savannah’s Tricentennial Plan and other policy documents.^[11][12]

Notable Comments About the Plan

Sketch of Savannah's Town Plan showing four cellular wards, each containing eight city blocks around a square (four residential blocks in the corners, each split by a narrow lane, plus four smaller commercial blocks east and west of the square)

Many prominent planners and urban theorists have commented on various attributes of the Oglethorpe Plan, particularly the layout of Savannah. The quotes cited below are only a few of many laudatory comments.

“The famous Oglethorpe plan for Savannah … made a unique use of the square in the design, nothing like it having appeared in a town plan before or since. Here, in Savannah, the square by frequent repetition becomes an integral part of the street pattern and creates a series of rhythmically placed openings which give a wonderful sense of space in a solidly built townscape.” –Paul Zucker^[13]

“… a plan so exalted that it remains as one of the finest diagrams for city organization and growth in existence.” –Edmund Bacon^[14]

“[T]he grid pattern of Savannah . . . is like no other we know in its fineness and its distinguishable squares. . . . [O]nce seen it is unforgettable, and it carries over into real life experience.” --Allan Jacobs^[15]

“Savannah occupies a unique position in the history of city planning. No complete precedents exist for its pattern of multiple open spaces….”—John W. Reps^[16]

Such comments nearly always apply to the ward layout found in the Savannah historic district, where the city preserved and elaborated on the original town plan laid out by Oglethorpe. Though seldom mentioned, notable vestiges of the Oglethorpe Plan can be found in the land use pattern surrounding Savannah; in the cities of Darien, Georgia; Brunswick, Georgia; and at Fort Frederica National Monument on St. Simons Island, Georgia.^[17]

Oglethorpe’s Unique Town Plan

Savannah map of 1818 showing continuation of the ward design with minor modifications

Oglethorpe developed a town plan in which the basic design unit was the ward. Wards were composed of four tything (residential) blocks and four trust (civic) blocks, arrayed around a central square. The tything blocks contained ten houses, which was the basic organizational unit for administration, farming, and defense. Each tything was assigned a square mile tract outside town for farming, with each family farmed a forty-five acre plot within that tract. The tything trained together for militia duty, a necessity on the frontier. Families were also assigned five-acre kitchen gardens near town.

Oglethorpe’s town plan was initially developed for Savannah, which grew largely in accordance with the original design. The same basic plan was intended for replication in towns throughout the colony; however, Darien, Georgia is the only other living town in which the original design has survived. It was laid out with four wards, two of which remain substantially intact. In its 2008 comprehensive plan, the town envisioned redeveloping its historic core in accordance with the original plan. Other towns, such as Brunswick, Georgia, adopted a version of the design after the Trustee period^[18]

The City of Savannah has preserved the ward design within its National Historic Landmark District. Oglethorpe originally laid out six wards in Savannah. The design proved remarkably adaptable as the city grew, and city officials perpetuated the same basic model for more than a century. Ultimately, twenty-four wards were laid out in general accordance with the original design, filling most of the original square-mile town common.^[19]

The city’s modern street grid outside of the historic district follows much of the original system of rights-of-way established under the Oglethorpe Plan for the gardens, farms, and villages that made up the Savannah region.

Relevance of the Plan Today

Many of the principles found in the Oglethorpe Plan are as relevant today as the democratic principles articulated at the dawn of the American Revolution. Urban theorists have duly acknowledged Oglethorpe’s remarkable design legacy in Savannah, but most have said little about the plan’s larger purpose of fostering social equity. Urban planners and designers in Savannah have rediscovered Oglethorpe’s principles of integrated town planning, incorporating them in the city’s comprehensive plan and various implementing ordinances. The city’s success in doing so now stands a model inviting wider application.^[20]

Influence of Oglethorpe’s Town Plan in Contemporary Planning

The Savannah town plan has been praised profusely, as mentioned earlier, but no recent or contemporary replicas of it exist either in infill or suburban developments, even in Savannah's own districts that lie beyond the original square mile commons. Its cellular ward system has been cited as a unique example of fractal, or “organic”, city growth in which each ward cell is a microcosm of the entire city.^[21]

Its recognized and praised advantages have recently been incorporated in a planning model, which is also cellular, that shows the influence of the Oglethorpe plan – the Fused Grid. Diagrammatic and approved plans, based on this model reflect the Savannah plan principle of organizing buildable space around open space. In this reformulated expression of it, which accommodates contemporary planning, technological and cultural priorities, Oglethorpe’s Town Plan could find a renewed appreciation and wider replication.

References

1. ↑ "Louisiane", in Le Petit Robert des Noms Propres encyclopedia, Paris, 1999, p. 1255.
2. ↑ "Mississippi", in The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, New York, 1994, p. 567.
3. ↑ Wilson, The Oglethorpe Plan, 37-44.
4. ↑ Wilson, The Oglethorpe Plan, 67-68.
5. ↑ See Egmont, volume I, 1730–1732 for detailed accounts of meetings to discuss the plan for an American colony.
6. ↑ Wilson, The Oglethorpe Plan, 37-40, 47-62.
7. ↑ Fries, The Urban Idea in Colonial America, 138-46.
8. ↑ Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, 111-16
9. ↑ Lane, Colonial Letters, 414
10. ↑ Wilson, The Oglethorpe Plan, 73-79.
11. ↑ Wilson, The Oglethorpe Plan, 134-35, 189-192.
12. ↑ Fries, The Urban Idea in Colonial America, 138-46.
13. ↑ Zucker, Paul. Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959. 242.
14. ↑ Bacon, Edmund N. Design of Cities. New York: Penguin Books, 1974. 219.
15. ↑ Jacobs, Allan B. Great Streets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993. 255-56.
16. ↑ Reps, John W. “C2 + L2 S2? Another Look at the Origins of Savannah’s Town Plan.” In Forty Years of Diversity: Essays on Colonial Georgia, edited by Harvey H. Jackson and Phinizy Spalding, 101-51. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984. 101.
17. ↑ Wilson, The Oglethorpe Plan, 153-57.
18. ↑ Wilson, The Oglethorpe Plan, 153-54.
19. ↑ Wilson, The Oglethorpe Plan, 134-50.
20. ↑ Tricentennial Plan, “Community Agenda.”
21. ↑ Batty, Michael; Longley, Paul (1994). Fractal Cities: A Geometry of Form and Function, Academic Press; ISBN 0124555705

Bibliography

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Oglethorpe, James. The Publications of James Edward Oglethorpe. Rodney M. Baine, editor. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994.

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Spalding, Phinizy. “James Edward Oglethorpe’s Quest for the American Zion.” Jackson, Harvey H., and Phinizy Spalding, eds. Forty Years of Diversity. Essays on Colonial Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984. 60-79.

Spalding, Phinizy. Oglethorpe in America. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press (Brown Thrasher Book), 1984.

Taylor, Paul S. Georgia Plan: 1732–1752. Berkeley: Institute of Business and Economic Research, 1972.

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Zucker, Paul. Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green. New York: Columbia University Press, 1959.