Davenport House

Master builder Isaiah Davenport built this Federal-style home on Columbia Square in 1820; after he died of yellow fever in 1827, his widow opened it as a boarding house to support the family. The best-known ghost is a young girl in old-fashioned clothing seen on the stairs and upper floors, sometimes speculated to be the Davenports' daughter Sarah, who died in 1822, though her identity has never been confirmed. Staff and visitors also report a phantom cat that dashes past the kitchen door and up the chimney, accompanied by an unexplained shrieking sound, along with disembodied footsteps and voices elsewhere in the house. The home's threatened demolition in 1955 spurred the founding of the Historic Savannah Foundation, which saved it and opened it as a museum.