Ballastone Inn

The land where this Savannah luxury hotel is situated formed part of the southern boundary of the original settlement founded by General James E. Oglethorpe in the fall of 1733. It had been given by grant to Jeremiah Papot, a vinedresser, in August of that year. The land was eventually sold to George Anderson, a local merchant. His son Major George W. Anderson, who owned the Lebanon Plantation, a large property some 17 miles south of Savannah, inherited the home, now this historic hotel, upon his father’s death in 1874 and used it as a townhouse. Major Anderson was the commanding officer at Fort McAllister when it fell to General Sherman in 1864. In 1883, Captain Henry Blun, who had emigrated from Germany in 1853, arriving in Savannah the following year, purchased the building. Captain Blun, who joined the Confederate Army in 1861, served at Fort Pulaski and with the forces on Tybee and Wilmington Islands. After the war ended, Captain Blun bought the residence at 14 East Oglethorpe and retained William Gibbons Preston, a prominent Boston architect, to enlarge the house to its present size. Ranked as one of the leading architects of the second half of the 19th century, Preston also built the Old DeSoto in Savannah, the Chatham County Courthouse and the Savannah Cotton Exchange Building, and he rebuilt the Independent Presbyterian Church after it burned in 1889. The Blun family continued to live on Oglethorpe until 1910, two years prior to the Captain’s death.