Savannah's tenacious drinking culture held fast during Prohibition. How will it evolve to keepup amid the Roaring 2020s?

Written by ZACHARY HAYES

In the heart of City Market, nestled between the nation’s singular American Prohibition Museum and the subterranean pit that until recently housed The Bar Bar, is a specter of one of Savannah’s most bizarre legacies. Here, a historical marker sheds some harsh light:

The First Act of Alcohol

Prohibition in America was decreed

in Savannah in 1735

Issued by His Majesty King George II

to General James Oglethorpe,

founder of the Colony of Georgia.

"Whereas it is found by Experience that the use of Liquors called Rum and Brandy, in the Province of Georgia are more particularly hurtful and pernicious to Man's Body and have been attended with dangerous Maladies and fatal distempers… NO Rum or Brandy nor any other kind of Spirits or Strong Waters by whatsoever name they are or may be distinguished… shall be imported or brought to shore."

Looking at the city today, it’s clear Savannah’s a hard town to strap onto the wagon.

The streets of the historic district are saturated with pubs, dives and hidden speakeasies — over 300 licenses to serve crammed into a square mile and a half, according to a recent report by the Responsible Hospitality Institute. There are six breweries in town and bar crawls of every flavor — historic, haunted, true crime, drag, shopping — the sidewalks teeming with revelers nursing half-full to-go cups while Pedal Pubs and Sip & Cycles haul throngs of cheering bachelorettes through the streets. And St. Patrick's Day? Savannah’s legendary bacchanal is one of the largest in the nation, attracting up to nearly half a million attendees each year, more than doubling the city’s population and average blood alcohol content.

“We don’t really have to market the drinkability of the street,” says Julie Musselman, executive director at Savannah’s Waterfront, a non-profit dedicated to promoting and preserving the city’s historic riverside entertainment district. “Sure, we can talk about the monuments, the events, the shrimp and grits, but we don’t ever have to push drinking. We’ve got that covered.”

The city is steeped in the influences of strong waters, right down to its most treasured lore, including such drunken tales as George Washington’s encounter with Artillery Punch and Jimmy Carter’s hazy speeches atop the Pinkie Masters bar. Even the literature of the city is rife with the sipping of Sazeracs and burial plot martinis, the famed libations of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”

“If you think this drinking reputation that Savannah has is something born out of the 21st century or even the late 1900s, it's just not the case,” says Travis Spangenburg, creative and production manager at the American Prohibition Museum, which sells tickets to historical tours led by a costumed guide, followed by a period accurate cocktail. “We’ve had tussles with alcohol and attempts to control it since our founding.”

When Georgia enacted the first state-wide prohibition in the South in 1907 — a full 12 years before the 18th amendment — Savannah residents wholeheartedly opposed the law, with some going so far as to call for secession. Loopholes were flagrantly abused, smuggling rings flourished and juries would acquit even the most obvious infractions. “I call that 12 years of practice,” says Spangenburg.

Once Prohibition swept the nation, Savannah’s already sophisticated smuggling operation, known as the Big Four, was, as the New York Times put it in 1923, “the largest and most widely operating bootleg ring known since the passage of the Volstead Act.” By the time the operation was busted, its ringleader, William Haar, was considered one of America’s greatest importers.

“He controlled a fleet of ships that took on loads of alcohol from Scotland, France, Cuba and the Bahamas and he sold this throughout the nation,” says Lisa Denmark, a professor of history at Georgia Southern University and author of “Worshipping Bacchus: Prohibition in Savannah, 1899-1922,” the pre-eminent text on the city's prohibition antics. “Haar was eventually arrested for failure to pay taxes, long before Al Capone.”

When the “Noble Experiment” of Prohibition, as President Herbert Hoover described it, was mercifully laid to rest, regulation filled in the gaps, bringing the party back out of the shadows in exchange for a few reasonable restrictions — liquor licenses, taxes and no more moonshining out in the marshes. And while Savannah has historically been fairly lax in some regards — it’s one of only a handful of cities with such an expansive open-container policy — the last few years have seen the city reevaluating its relationship with alcohol once again.

City Market, now under new ownership with Green Room Partners, is taking measures to foster a more family-friendly, less nightlife-focused environment according to statements made to local news stations early this year. (Editor’s Note: Green Room Partners declined to comment for this article.) The Bar Bar, which recently opened a new location on Wilmington Island, closed the doors of its flagship dive in the market in August after 30 years, its owners claiming on social media that City Market would not renew their lease. Across the street, the sports bar Pour Larry’s is now required to close at midnight as part of their new lease agreement; Back in the day, they and many Market watering holes kept the party going until 3 a.m. And while City Market has always had its fair share of family-oriented options — a wide range of restaurants, confectionaries and art galleries call the space home — the city’s post-pandemic booms in tourism over the last few years have raised concerns over late-night safety.

“It’s my understanding that they are changing the mix of restaurants and bars to attract a more sophisticated customer in the evenings versus making it one of those after-midnight places where things can go badly,” says Joe Marinelli, president of Visit Savannah, the city’s official destination marketing organization. And it’s no wonder: in recent years, City Market had become a place where things could — and often would —take a turn for the worse come nightfall.

A string of overnight shootings in and around the open-air market in the summer of 2022 led city officials to commission the Responsible Hospitality Institute to study Savannah’s nightlife and draft a plan to improve its nighttime policies. Their final report was unveiled in July, and while the plan is still awaiting feedback from the public before being brought to a vote, their recommendations are extensive — developing a Savannah Office of Nightlife, a dedicated nightlife police force and a server registry for bars and restaurants, to name a few — and could considerably reshape the city’s late-night experience. “Do we want to be known as a place where you got drunk on River Street? Is that really the image we want to portray?” says Musselman. “And we decided that it wasn't.”

Meanwhile, Savannah’s clout as an international destination continues to grow. In 2022, Savannah played host to 9.7 million overnight trips, garnered more than $4.4 billion in total visitor spending and grew hospitality-related jobs by 9.6%, according to a report by Longwoods International. The city is bolstered by its flourishing culinary scene and new world-class entertainment districts à la Plant Riverside, Eastern Wharf and Starland. And with the incoming expansion of the Savannah Convention Center expected to bring in a whole new suite of bleisure travelers — that’s business and leisure — Hostess City leaders are taking extra care to ensure not only the safety of its guests but visitors' perceptions, as well. The next step?

“It's time to put some new lipstick on River Street and make it more inviting, and not just for visitors, but for locals too,” says Marinelli. “Frankly, I think it’s overdue.”