An 1819 Regency-style urban mansion paired with one of the earliest and best-preserved intact urban slave quarters in the South, showcasing early American indoor plumbing and the intertwined lives of a wealthy household and the enslaved people who ran it.
Monday: Closed
Tuesday to Saturday: 10am to 5pm
Guided tours run every 15 minutes; last guided tour at 4pm (self-guided audio tours 3:30–4pm)
Closed New Year's Day, MLK Jr. Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day
Child (6–12): $10 | Child (5 and under): Free
Admission includes unlimited entry to all three Telfair Museums sites for one week
Museums for All: $3 per adult with SNAP EBT card, children 17 and under free
How to Get There
From Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport (10 mi): Take I-95 S to I-16 E, then follow I-16 E into downtown Savannah as it becomes Montgomery Street. Continue east through the Historic District to Oglethorpe Square, where the house sits on Abercorn Street.
Overview
On Savannah's elegant Oglethorpe Square stands one of the finest examples of English Regency architecture in America, a mansion whose polished exterior conceals a far more complicated history. Designed by architect William Jay and completed in 1819 for cotton merchant Richard Richardson, the house dazzled early visitors, including the Marquis de Lafayette, who stayed here in 1825, with innovations like one of the country's earliest indoor plumbing systems and a dramatic interior bridge. In 1830, Savannah mayor George Welshman Owens purchased the property, and it remained in his family for over a century until his granddaughter bequeathed it to the Telfair Academy in 1951.
What sets this National Historic Landmark apart, however, is what stands just behind the main house: one of the earliest and best-preserved intact urban slave quarters in the South. Guided tours move deliberately between both spaces, weaving together the story of the Owens family's wealth and the enslaved men, women, and children whose labor sustained it, from the formal dining room to the working cellar and the two-story quarters where they lived. It is a rare opportunity to see, side by side, the full architecture of privilege and bondage in antebellum Savannah.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia articles and official tourism pages for the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters, which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.