Low, Juliette Gordon, Historic District

Two Savannah properties make up this landmark, both linked to Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts in the United States. The Wayne-Gordon House at 10 Oglethorpe Avenue was built between 1818 and 1821 for jurist James Moore Wayne. It later passed to the Gordon family and was her birthplace and childhood home. A brick, stuccoed house, it gained a third floor and a curved east piazza in an 1886 renovation designed by Detlef Lienau. The Girl Scouts bought and restored it in 1953 and opened it to the public in 1956. The second property, at 330 Drayton Street, began as a carriage house and servants' quarters for the Andrew Low House, likely around 1849. In 1912 Low remodeled it as a meeting place for local troops, and she left it to the Savannah Girl Scout council. On March 12, 1912, she organized the first troop with eighteen girls. Membership had grown past 168,000 by her death in 1927.