The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America

In October of 2009 Historic Savannah Foundation presented a Historic Preservation Award to the Andrew Low House for the conservation project.  It has taken Society members from all over the State some six years to plan, to raise most of the funding and to complete the $1.1 million project. The workmen are now gone, the dust settled, and in the words of our Annual Giving Fund Chairman Deryl Beadles, “not since its construction in 1848 has our grand 161-year old State Headquarters and museum house been in such pristine condition.”  During the process, we:

  • Updated wiring throughout the house

  • Additional light fixtures on the headquarters floor and     enhanced computer equipment

• All windows have been redone, which uncovered original interior graining on the parlor floor

• Front doors, which turned out to be cypress, were refinished to look like their original mahogany appearance

• New HVAC, emergency lighting and security systems

• Additional bathroom, handicapped accessible, installed on ground floor

• New glass wall system in the museum store, installed to be easily removed if the space should be returned to an open air piazza

• All ironwork redone and a redesigned and safer handrail installed from the shop down to the courtyard

• New exterior lighting outside the rear and side entrances, four lanterns on posts in the courtyard, and updated lighting in the front garden and over the front door.• Rear courtyard wall rebuilt for safety reasons, French drain installed to eliminate flooding during heavy downpours

• Original shutters refurbished and new hardware forged to match the original

• Exterior paint analysis completed to reveal original color scheme

• Original coffee-colored stucco exterior uncovered and conserved.

• All brownstone redone and lion statuary on front steps refinished to match brownstone