A century of Savannah history: Richard Kessler returning Armstrong mansion to residential roots

It's one of the biggest homes in Savannah, the birthplace of Armstrong Junior College and the former home of one of the city's oldest law firms.

Now the Armstrong Mansion at Gaston and Bull streets is returning to its roots as a private residence 100 years after its completion.

"I'm always attracted to monumental, beautiful, unique things and buildings… I was actually riding by this one day and I looked up at it and said, 'That is a gorgeous, gorgeous, monumental building that needs care. I think that can be bought,'" said hotelier and developer Richard Kessler, who purchased the mansion last year.

After having his real estate agent reach out to the team at Bouhan Falligant LLP, who had called the mansion home since 1970, Kessler had the 25,000-square-foot building under contract within days, although he wasn't sure what his plans were.

"It's a one of a kind. If you look across the Southeast, you have nothing like this - this kind of location on the park, the architecture, history, quality of construction. It's totally a unique piece of real estate," he said, adding that it took more than a little urging from friends before he decided make it his home.

Now with the plan mapped out, Kessler is returning the home back to its original use with the help of Choate Construction, architect Christian Sottile, interior designer Chuck Chewning and landscape architect Sheila Wertimer.

Since mid-2017 crews have been working to restore the home to its original grandeur, uncovering details that have been hidden for decades, including ornate plaster ceilings, intricately designed door hinges and bronze details that have been hidden by paint.

"The renovation in scope is very extensive," Kessler said.

"We started on the exterior to get it perfected back to its original condition and so now we're completing that phase of it. We'll start over on the landscaping and that will be totally redone."

Sottile said the Italian Renaissance Revival style home, which was designed by Henrik Wallin, is one of the finest examples of the style in the country.

"(Wallin) did some of Savannah's best buildings and many of them have been lost, but this one really stands as a testament to his skill," Sottile said of Wallin, who was born in Sweden but spent most of his career in Savannah.

"What's remarkable is that all of these details are still here. Some of them have been covered up over the years, so it's a process of restoring."

The history

Constructed from 1917 to 1919, the home was built for George Ferguson Armstrong, an Effingham County native who served as president of Strachan and Company Shipping. He also served as director of Hibernia Bank and president of the Mutual Mining Company.

No expense was spared in the original construction of the home, which featured the latest décor and technology available from a central vacuum system to the heavy bronze entry doors, which would have cost upward of $25,000 at the time.

Today they're worth about $500,000.

"The technology that they used was incredible… We just keep discovering things that they did. They were really thinking about the details of the building and they built it for the long term," Kessler said.

Following Armstrong's death in 1924, his wife, Lucy May Camp Armstrong, continued to live in the home with their daughter, Lucy Camp Armstrong. She later remarried and donated the building to the city of Savannah in 1935 to be used as the founding location of Armstrong Junior College.

A few years later the original carriage house on the rear of the property was demolished to make way for an auditorium, which was also designed by Wallin.

"It was actually (Wallin's) last project and he didn't see it finished, but he designed Herschel V. Jenkins Auditorium. So this was an important building added to the site," Sottile said.

The auditorium was completed in 1938, but in the following years as the college began to expand they outgrew the downtown campus. In 1966, the school, then Armstrong State College, moved to the southside.

For a brief period of time after the college relocated, antiques dealer Jim Williams leased the home using it as an antiquities shop and overseeing the demolition of the auditorium in 1968 with the intention of restoring the garden.

"He owned it for two years and it was a real controversy to take (the auditorium) down, no one wanted to see it come down, but it did and the garden never got put back because two years later he felt it was more than he could handle and felt that it would be well stewarded by what would become Bouhan Falligant," Sottile said.

In place of the auditorium the rear of the home was made into a parking lot, and in 1970, the then-law firm of Bouhan Williams and Levy leased the building. While the firm never owned the Armstrong House, several senior partners acquired interest in the building, holding it as the Armstrong House Trust until Kessler purchased the home.

Now 80 years later the parking lot is gone and a garden will return along with a two-story carriage house and a swimming pool.

"The mansion is one of the most powerful buildings in Savannah and the siting and prominence of this structure warrants an equally strong setting," said Wertimer, who is based in Charleston.

"From the onset, Mr. Kessler wanted to make certain that the gardens were as elegant as the building and that the proportions of the spaces within the gardens responded to and reflected the character of the impressive architecture. We have worked closely with Sottile and Sottile to make that happen."

Converting a surface parking lot to a garden requires extensive site preparation. The Armstrong-Kessler project will be the fourth time the firm has replaced a lot with a garden, and Wertimer said there's nothing more satisfying.

"The redesign of a garden for the Armstrong Mansion would be an important project no matter where it was located, but the prominence of this site in Savannah draws additional attention and interest and, coupled with the owner's passionate commitment to quality, insures that this will be a setting of lasting importance," she said.

Exterior and interior restoration

From the windows and floors to the ornate plaster ceilings and the joints between the specially made glazed marble bricks and granite, every detail of the home is undergoing review.

"We worked meticulously with masonry restoration experts on restoring this glazed brick properly in accordance with the Interior Standards for Historic Preservation to really bring back what it looked like originally," Sottile said.

"Every brick is being reviewed, analyzed and restored and every joint in the masonry has been cleaned."

A special film is being placed over the windows to insulate and provide strength. The bronze hardware, which has been hidden by multiple coats of paint over the years, is being stripped and brought back to its original luster.

"We have a polycarbonate film that will be added to the windows, as high performance as these windows were a hundred years ago they're single pane glass," Sottile said.

"The best technology then is now being complimented with the best technology today, so the polycarbonate film actually turns them into the equivalent of double pane glazing, so we get the thermal efficiency that you would of a modern window without compromising the original window glass."

The home's original plans and renderings are guiding the team as they work to restore the home down to placement of the furniture in the grand hall, which is anchored by an Italian marble staircase at the rear and a Renaissance-style fireplace to the right.

"They're precise and remarkably detailed as to what's here in the spaces," Chewning said of the original drawings.

"That's been a great reference point to us as far as the restoration process, the colors and the function of the rooms themselves, which were sort of lost through history. Now we know this was a bedroom or this was a sitting room, we know the function of the rooms."

The main floor serves primarily as a space for entertaining and includes a kitchen, library, music room, dining room and study with the original light sconces and hardware, including the thermostat.

Plaster was removed from the walls of what was once the Armstrong family's kitchen, which had been turned into an office, to reveal original tile walls. The family's towering safe, which was used to lock away their silver, still sits in the corner.

"Bradley Lock and Key have already come, they checked it out and we have the combination and all done. We're going to strip it down to its original condition," Kessler said of the safe.

The second floor features grand bedroom suites and outdoor access to the curved hemicycle patio space on the home's north end, which looks out onto Bull Street and into Forsyth Park.

Plaster medallions on the walls of the sitting area adjacent to the master bedroom will be returned to their original blue color, which mimicked the design of Wedgwood china.

"This room we have the original renderings, so we know what (the sitting room) and the master bedroom looked like," Chewning said.

Down the hall, original medicine cabinets and hardware can still be found in the bathrooms, one of which features a stand-up tile shower with 10 different nozzles.

"That's almost like a car wash," Kessler laughs.

"We're refinishing this one with the original pedestal sinks and we'll put it all back like it was originally."

The top floor, which was the first area of the building to be divided into offices when the college opened, features a billiard room and conservatory. The wrap-around rooftop terrace, which overlooks the back and front of the house, will be turned into an outdoor living area.

"On the original plans this was called the music conservatory, so we're really now combining these rooms into one space. Richard has a beautiful Bösendorfer grand piano that will go in here and it will really be used as the entertaining extended of the house, so it becomes more like a lounge," Chewning said.

"You can come up here and most of all enjoy the views from the rooftop terrace. It's a beautiful room."

100 reasons to celebrate

Although the question of when the work will be finished evokes laughter from Kessler and his team, he aims for the restoration to be wrapped up by November and hopes to be fully moved in by Dec. 1. Between the combined decades of experience and many accolades of his team, Kessler is confident about the timeline.

"I think what we tried to do was assemble the premier team here in Savannah to tackle this and I think we've done that," he said. "We got the A-team on this."

Kessler declined to disclose the total investment cost, but said the home is truly a treasure of Savannah and he's glad to have the opportunity to make the contribution and restore it back to its original condition. Keeping true to the Armstrong family timeline he's got big plans for the home early next year.

"When I bought it, they gave it to me… the law firm somehow got the original invitation that was sent out for the grand opening in 1919. They had a grand opening party with about 200 people on Jan. 1, 1919," Kessler said.

"This Jan. 1 2019, exactly 100 years later, we're planning our opening party. Exactly 100 years to the day."

He estimates he'll be at the home about half-time, but will also open the home to entertainers who will be performing at Plant Riverside in the future, thanks to a newly signed deal with Live Nation, a California-based entertainment company.

"I'm thinking through how I can fully integrate what this is and what it can be as an entertainment home to the power plant and what we're doing there," he said.

"Then I can justify it in my own mind, not that I need a 25,000 square-foot house."