SCAD: The Art School That Saved a City's Buildings
Seventy-one students showed up in September 1979 to attend a college that barely existed. The Savannah College of Art and Design had four staff members, seven faculty, and exactly one building - the 1892 Savannah Volunteer Guards Armory, a Romanesque Revival red-brick structure that the founders had purchased for $250,000 and renamed Poetter Hall. The college offered eight majors, including one that would prove prophetic: historic preservation. Nearly five decades later, SCAD occupies 67 buildings across Savannah's downtown historic district, enrolls more than 17,000 students from over 110 countries, and has been recognized by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Institute of Architects for saving structures that the city had largely abandoned. The school did not just move into Savannah. It became the city's architecture.
Building by Building
SCAD's expansion reads like a rescue mission conducted one condemned building at a time. After Poetter Hall, the school began acquiring structures throughout Savannah's downtown historic and Victorian districts - derelict warehouses, shuttered department stores, former rail buildings, abandoned civic halls. Each was restored to serve a new function: the old Maas Brothers department store became the Jen Library, housing 42,000 books, 11,000 bound periodicals, and rare collections including the Don Bluth Collection of Animation, all behind a large glass staircase and floor-to-ceiling windows. The former Central of Georgia Railway headquarters became the SCAD Museum of Art. A one-time synagogue became a student center. The campus sprawls across the 22 historic squares of old Savannah, its buildings scattered among monuments, live oaks, and the kind of Southern-Gothic atmosphere that draws visitors before they even hear about the art school inside it.
From Savannah to Three Continents
The original eight majors - ceramics, graphic design, historic preservation, textile design, interior design, painting, photography, and printmaking - multiplied as enrollment surged from 71 to 500 students by 1982, then to 1,000 by 1986, and 2,000 by 1989. The growth pushed beyond Savannah. In 2002, SCAD opened a study-abroad campus in Lacoste, France, housed in 15th- and 16th-century structures in the Provencal hill village. In 2005, a location opened in Midtown Atlanta, merging with the Atlanta College of Art the following year. And in 2010, SCAD took over the renovated North Kowloon Magistracy in Hong Kong's Sham Shui Po district - a campus it operated for ten years before closing in 2020 amid the Hong Kong protests and the pandemic. Today the school ranks as the number-one design university in the Americas and Europe according to Red Dot Design Award rankings, and its online programs are counted among the nation's best by U.S. News and World Report.
The Festival City
SCAD did not just restore Savannah's buildings. It filled them with events. The Savannah Film Festival, held each October and November in two historic theaters the college owns - the Trustees Theater and the Lucas Theatre for the Arts - draws more than 40,000 attendees and has hosted guests including Roger Ebert, Ian McKellen, Michael Douglas, and Sidney Lumet. The deFINE ART festival brings contemporary artists to Savannah each February. Every April, students transform Forsyth Park for the Sidewalk Arts Festival, covering the ground in competitive chalk drawings. On Tybee Island, there is a sand sculpture competition. The college's annual calendar reads like a city's cultural programming, and that is not accidental. SCAD generates what it claims is over $766 million in annual economic impact for Georgia, and its events have become inseparable from Savannah's identity as a destination.
The Complicated Legacy
Growth on this scale does not come without friction. SCAD does not pay property taxes in Savannah, and its continued acquisition of buildings has raised property values - and property taxes - in lower-income neighborhoods. Community members held a large-scale protest at the SCAD Museum of Art in 2023, citing displacement of Black families as the campus expanded. The school has claimed nearly $800 million of property out of local tax revenue. Internally, SCAD has faced scrutiny over executive compensation - its president received $9.6 million in 2014 - and has been censured by the American Association of University Professors since 1993 over issues of academic freedom and tenure. The tension is real: the same institution that rescued dozens of historic buildings from demolition has also reshaped the city's economy and demographics in ways not everyone welcomes. Savannah's relationship with SCAD is a story still being written.
From the Air
Located at 32.073°N, 81.096°W in downtown Savannah. SCAD has no single campus boundary - its 67 buildings are distributed throughout Savannah's Historic District, making the entire downtown core essentially the campus. From the air, the college's presence is invisible as individual buildings; instead, you see the distinctive grid-and-square pattern of Savannah's original city plan, with green squares punctuating the blocks of historic architecture. The nearest airport is Savannah/Hilton Head International (KSAV), approximately 9 miles northwest. At moderate altitude, the contrast between the dense historic grid and the surrounding modern development clearly defines the area where SCAD operates. The Savannah River forms the northern boundary of the district.