Daffin Park-Parkside Place Historic District, located in Savannah’s southeastern section, is bounded by Victory Drive, Waters Avenue, Bee Street and 51st Street Lane. On its western border is the Ardsley Park-Chatham Crescent Historic District, the two constituent subdivisions of which were laid out and developed nearly contemporaneously to Parkside Place and Daffin Park.
History Of The Daffin Park-Parkside Place Historic District
Daffin Park
In the northern half of the Historic District is the early-20th century Daffin Park, designed for Savannah by up-and-coming landscape architect John Nolen to provide a space in the city for active recreation that would complement Savannah’s existing Forsyth Park and smaller squares.
Daffin Park is one of only two examples of Nolen’s work in Georgia, the other being the city plan of Columbus. It is also a rare example of a City Beautiful-inspired recreational park in the state, designed with the classical lines and formal avenues of that style, briefly popular in the early years of the 20th century.
Grayson Stadium, one of the best surviving examples of interwar-period stadium construction in Georgia, is located in the eastern part of Daffin Park. The stadium was historically, and is still, used as a baseball field, and is currently home to the minor-league Savannah Sand Gnats.
Grayson Stadium was re-constructed in 1941 on the site of the former Municipal Stadium, itself constructed in 1926 but damaged in a hurricane.
Parkside Place
The southern part of the Historic District is the Parkside Place subdivision, laid out by the Parkside Land Company in 1913, partially to capitalize upon the increased land values in the vicinity of the new park.
Parkside Place was developed on the grid plan employed in most of the more recent part of the city, with streets and service lanes to the rear of lots, and the profusion of trees – live oaks, crepe myrtles, palmettos, sweet gums, and magnolias, including numerous specimens that predate the development of the residential area – that characterizes the city as a whole.
The residential portion of the Daffin Park-Parkside Place Historic District is comparatively small, running the five block length of the park and four-and-a-half blocks deep.
Most of the housing dates from before 1950, by which time all the lots had been sold and built upon.
Parkside Place, as with Ardsley Park and Chatham Crescent to its west, was laid out on the assumption that the newly-proliferating automobile would become the dominant means of transportation for its residents, with driveways planned for the mostly single-family dwellings.
Craftsman-style bungalows and larger Craftsman and Colonial Revival-style houses are the predominant architectural style in Parkside Place. Larger, two-story houses are more prevalent on the streets nearest to Daffin Park, with mostly single-story dwellings in the more southerly portions of the district.
Like many suburbs laid out at in this period, Parkside Place adopted a system of racial covenants, specifying that lots and houses were only to be sold to or occupied by whites. The sale of liquor, and most commercial activity, were also prohibited. These stipulations remained in place until 1936.
References
Steven H Moffson, National Register Of Historic Places Registration Form, Daffin Park-Parkside Place Historic District. National Park Service, 1999.