{"nrhp_refnum":"82002393","name":"Fort Screven Historic District","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Tilton, Butler, Van Horn, Railroad and Alger Aves., and Pulaski Rd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Tybee Island","county":"Chatham County","state":"GA","lat":32.02346466300003,"lon":-80.84972707699995,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1982-05-25","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Community Planning and Development","Landscape Architecture","Military","Engineering","Transportation","Exploration/Settlement","Architecture","Communications"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Historic district at the northern end of Tybee Island, Chatham County, Georgia, combining the Tybee Light lighthouse complex with Fort Screven, a coastal defense post planned by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1897.","why_significant":"The nomination argues Fort Screven reflects the nation's emergence as a world power and the coastal defense technology of its era. It is also significant for military fortification, community planning, landscape architecture and architecture, notably Officers Row. The lighthouse is significant for its engineering and for its Stick-style support cottages.","narrative":"Fort Screven and Tybee Light occupy the northern head of Tybee Island, fifteen miles east of Savannah, where they guarded the shipping channel into the port. Planned in 1897, the fort includes six concrete gun batteries, a crescent-shaped Officers Row on a sixteen-foot earthen berm, a fort village with barracks and support buildings, and a quartermaster area. The original guns were removed for scrap during World War II. Some batteries now serve as foundations for homes, and Battery Garland holds the Tybee Museum. The wood-frame officers' houses, built of cypress and pine, have double galleried porches, slate roofs and pressed-tin ceilings. The lighthouse, with a first-order Fresnel lens dating to an 1867 rebuilding, has brick walls twelve feet thick at the base and a 140-foot cast-iron stair. Its two larger cottages are described as the only known Stick-style buildings from the 1870s or 1880s remaining on the island.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":"Venable Construction Company (Battery Brumby, 1897-1899)","architectural_style":"Vernacular Colonial Queen Anne (Officers Row); Stick style (lighthouse cottages); Beaux Arts Classical interior detail","criteria":[],"status_note":"Mixed condition: Officers Row houses are privately owned and used as weekend and summer homes; Battery Garland houses the Tybee Museum; some batteries are vacant or built over.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:40.754593-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_GA/82002393.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/82002393/5629216158-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/82002393/5629216158-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY 3.0","author":"Brian Stansberry","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tybee-island-north-beach-ga1.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Brian Stansberry</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tybee-island-north-beach-ga1.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/93207306","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49490721"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/georgia/chatham-county/fort-screven-historic-district-82002393/"}