Savannah is home to a National Historic Landmark District of two and a half square miles and more than eleven hundred architecturally significant buildings. The Victorian District is one of the nation's largest collections of that period's architecture. We looked at just a few of them.

The Mercer House, now called the Mercer-Williams House Museum, 429 Bull Street, stands  at the southwest end of Monterey Square. In 1964, a boy chasing pigeons on the roof fell over the edge and impaled himself on the iron fence below. In 1913 a previous owner tripped over the second floor banister, fractured his hip and suffered a concussion, dying three days later. The house was the scene of the shooting of Jim Williams' assistant, Danny Hansford. This story was turned in to a novel in 1994 by John Berendt calles Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Also a Clint Eastwood film starring Kevin Spacey and John Cusack. 

History: Construction of the house began in 1860. Designed by John S. Norris for General Hugh Weedon Mercer (great-grandfather of the songwriter Johnny Mercer who wrote for Bing Crosby and many others – who won four Oscars including one for Moon River). Building was interrupted by the American Civil War, finally completed around 1868 by the new owner, John Wilder.

For a period in the twentieth century, the building was used as the Savannah Shriners Alee Temple. It then lay vacant for a decade until in 1969 when Jim Williams, one of Savannah’s earliest and most dedicated private restorationists, bought the house and restored it. The house is now owned by his sister Dorothy Kingery and is open as a museum and features on the ghost tours. Quite a story.