Jekyll Island, Georgia
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Driftwood Beach
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Driftwood Oaks
Jekyll Island, Georgia
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Live By Night: Historic Downtown Brunswick Being Transformed into Prohibition-Era Ybor City
The south end of Newcastle Street, in Brunswick’s Old Town National Register Historic District is getting a dose of Hollywood special effects this week as crews prepare the area for filming the upcoming Ben Affleck movie Live By Night, based on the bestselling novel by Dennis Lehane. Brunswick was chosen to fill in for Prohibition-era Ybor City, the now-trendy Tampa neighborhood known as the center of the American cigar industry for much of its existence.
It was an eye-opening experience for me to see this process in action. I’ve photographed several abandoned set locations in my endless travel throughout Georgia in the past decade, but the vitality and energy of these crews gives me a new appreciation for everything that goes into making a movie. And it doesn’t hurt that I’m a big fan of Ben Affleck’s work.
Most of the work is cosmetic, with paint and signage appearing on familiar storefronts. The magic of filmmaking insures that nearly all these places will return to normal soon after the movie wraps.
While two local artists take a break beside a mural at the corner of Newcastle and Monck Streets, carpenters help put the finishing touches on a period furniture store.
As a photographer of fading rural Georgia, I see signs and murals like these quite often, but I tip my hat to these artists, especially the attention to detail. It’s amazing!
Across the street, an empty lot on the corner of Newcastle and Monck has taken on a whole new appearance, with the ground-up construction of Ciego de Avila, representing a restaurant of old Ybor City.
Everything was on the move, from tables to sand. More about the sand in a bit.
A little further down Newcastle, just past Ciego de Avila is this newly constructed prop, the Bodega la Concha. It’s one of my personal favorites.
Back across the street, detail work was being done on more storefronts.
The Hicks Brothers Hardware Store, seen below, should be familiar to those who grew up in the era of independent local retailers, all too rare today.
They even had an old seed display.
And this cool sign for Columbian Pure Manila Rope.
This prop worker was making final tweaks on a cardboard advertising sign and was patient with me taking her picture.
Just across the street, Tampa Savings Bank and Ybor Iron Works are taking shape.
Some of these structures have been empty for a long time, and Brunswick friends have suggested that they’re happy to see any improvements, even cosmetic ones.
Brunswick’s magnificent Historic City Hall (seen here behind a Warner Bros. “dirt truck”), on the south end of Newcastle Street, is essentially camera-ready and slated to appear in the movie, as well.
These trucks and lots of hard labor are spreading dirt all over the street surfaces that will appear in the film.
And the street looks great…
Working my way back up Newcastle Street I was happy to see the Spanish Coca-Cola mural on the side of the Ciego de Avila Restaurante.
There was more detail work being done on that structure. It seems to be never-ending.
Back at the corner of Newcastle and Monck, there’s this great view.
And more workers securing the set.
Monck Street should feature prominently in the film.
Besides this wonderful recreation of an early automotive garage, there’s the 5th Avenue Social Club, surely a favorite of the criminal elements integral to the story.
And finally, looking down Monck toward Newcastle.
If you’re curious about the movie, you can read Dennis Lehane’s book, or visit IMDB, where this anonymous plot summary was first posted: Boston, 1926. The ’20s are roaring. Liquor is flowing, bullets are flying, and one man sets out to make his mark on the world. Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops. Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing. Now having graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city’s most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw. But life on the dark side carries a heavy price. In a time when ruthless men of ambition, armed with cash, illegal booze, and guns, battle for control, no one-neither family nor friend, enemy nor lover-can be trusted. Beyond money and power, even the threat of prison, one fate seems most likely for men like Joe: an early death. But until that day, he and his friends are determined to live life to the hilt. Joe embarks on a dizzying journey up the ladder of organized crime that takes him from the flash of Jazz Age Boston to the sensual shimmer of Tampa’s Latin Quarter to the sizzling streets of Cuba. Live by Night is a riveting epic layered with a diverse cast of loyal friends and callous enemies, tough rumrunners and sultry femmes fatales, Bible-quoting evangelists and cruel Klansmen, all battling for survival and their piece of the American dream. At once a sweeping love story and a compelling saga of revenge, it is a spellbinding tour de force of betrayal and redemption, music and murder, that brings fully to life a bygone era when sin was cause for celebration and vice was a national virtue.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2361317/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_pl
Brunswick, Georgia
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Blackbeard Creek
Blackbeard Creek is actually a network of tidal creeks and inlets located west of St. Catherine’s Sound. This view was made near the Yellow Bluff area of Colonel’s Island.
Liberty County, Georgia
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Seabrook Village Oak
Many consider moss-draped oaks romantic symbols of Coastal Georgia. This particularly nice one is located on the grounds of the Seabrook Village living history museum in Liberty County.
http://libertycounty.org/seabrook-village/
Seabrook, Georgia
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Eddie Bowens House, 1903, Seabrook
The highlight of the historic Eddie Bowens Farm is this house, which was originally built as a simple two-room hall-parlor structure and expanded over the years. The low-lying land of coastal Liberty County was suitable for little agriculture beyond rice cultivation, and remnants of this activity can be found on the property. Scuppernongs and other fruits are present; notable are two strawberry trees, a relative of mulberry that botanists speculate were brought to Georgia during the Colonial era for use in the short-lived silkworm experiments.
The Eddie Bowens Farm is significant as an excellent example of an early 20th-century African-American farm. Mr Bowens was a farmer, construction worker, carpenter, oysterman, and root medicine practitioner, as well as a deacon and elder at Sunbury Baptist Church.
http://focus.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/04001209
National Register of Historic Places
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Ebenezer Presbyterian Church & Reverend Joseph Williams Memorial, Freedmen’s Grove
Founded in 1887 by the Reverend Joseph Williams, Ebenezer Presbyterian is an important African-American congregation. Reverend Williams’s headstone, which faces the church from across US 17, reads: In Memory of Rev. Joseph Williams – Founder of Presbyterianism among the colored people of Georgia – Born in Providence Island West Indies A. D. 1805 – Died at Riceboro Ga U.S.A. Nov. 22, 1899.
“A Chronicle of Black History in Liberty County, Georgia”, by Lillie Walthour Gillard, gives insight into the work of the Reverend Mr. Williams, as he was widely known.
The Reverend Joseph Williams, a native of the West Indies, came to Liberty County from Macon, Georgia, in the year 1867. On April 12, 1868, he organized a Presbyterian church in the building of “Old Midway” church with 300 members and worshipped there for eighteen years. This congregation became part of Knox Presbytery and of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., and was known as the Midway Presbyterian Church. Following a period of controversy over the rights of occupancy of Old Midway-Congregational or Presbyterian-the Reverend Mr. Williams organized a group of forty-six persons formerly members of a church pastored by Dr. C. C. Jones. In 1880 the church moved to Riceboro where a new building was constructed with the assistance of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.
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Chattel-Style House, Freedmen’s Grove
This style originates in Barbados and is occasionally found in African-American communities on the coast. Examples are increasingly rare. This one is has been preserved and adapted for continued use, though not as a dwelling.
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Vernacular House, Freedmen’s Grove
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Vernacular House, Freedmen’s Grove
This was a commonly seen style in Gullah-Geechee and other African-American communities on the Georgia coast in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. As in other communities, coastal vernacular houses focused on practicality over style, but over time have come to be appreciated for their unassuming simplicity.
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Lambright House, Freedmen’s Grove
The iconic home of Rosa Lambright remains the symbol of the Freedmen’s Grove community (sometimes spelled, as on the adjacent road, Freedman or Freedman’s Grove). I can’t resist driving by when I’m in the area and have photographed it numerous times over the past eight years. Olivia Baker shared background on the house on Vanishing South Georgia on 31 March 2010: …The lady that lived in this house was a dynamic elementary school teacher. Ms. Lambright taught generations of families in the Liberty County community. She was affectionately known and respected by members of the Limerick, and Freedman Grove community, and a faithful member and leader of the “Ebernezer Presbyterian Church. [She] actively supported the annual Vacation Bible School and end of the summer “August Picnic”. The community looked forward to these events each year. On 6 August 2010 she added: Ms. Lambright taught 1st – 3rd grades in a two-room wood framed, white schoolhouse, located about 3/4 mile down Freedman Grove Road. 4th – 5th Grades were taught by Mrs. M. Baker. Ms. Lambright taught my father and my mother, my father was born in 1918. I was born in 1945; she taught me and my four older siblings. I do not know the exact dates she taught. However, I do know that she taught between 1918 and 1950’s. On or about 1953 the two-room school closed, when similiar schools throughout Liberty County were closed and students attending these smaller 2-room “schools” were transferred to the Liberty County Elementary/High School. I subsequently graduated from Liberty County High School in 1963. Also, during those years public schools were still segregated…
It’s an anchor, a sustainable property of the sort that was once the rule among African-American communities in Coastal Georgia.
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Neighborhood Store, Freedmen’s Grove
In 2011, Kimberly Robinson told Vanishing South Georgia that her father owns the house and the store and is in the process of slowly restoring both structures.
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Italian Renaissance House, Savannah
I believe this one’s located on Victory Drive. In organizing my archives, I came across it, but it wasn’t identified.
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Colonial Revival House, Savannah
I believe this is located on Victory Drive. It’s another archival image I never identified.
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700 Drayton Street, 1888, Savannah
Savannah Victorian Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Located on beautiful Forsyth Park, in the heart of Savannah’s historic district, this Victorian-Romanesque landmark served as the inspiration for The Mansion on Forsyth Park, a boutique hotel attached to the house. The hotel’s flagship restaurant, 700 Drayton, is the present occupant.
http://www.mansiononforsythpark.com/
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Francis M. Stone House, 1818, Savannah
Savannah National Historic Landmark District
Considered one of the finest examples of Federal style architecture in Savannah, the restored Stone House is also located on idyllic Columbia Square. It is a private residence.
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Tivoli River, Bryan County
This is the view at the Tivoli River Fishing Pier & Kayak Launch, on Belfast-Keller Road, and it’s the first public “kayak/canoe-only launch” in Coastal Georgia. The Tivoli is an 8.9 mile-long tidal river that flows into the Belfast River, just north of that river’s terminus at the Medway River. The website paddling.net calls this a “must-paddle” destination. The fishing is generally good, too, with redfish, trout, and flounder being abundant much of the year.
http://www.paddling.net/launches/showLaunch.html?lid=18697
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Kilkenny Marina, Bryan County
Kilkenny Marina is small and the store quite basic but online reviews consistently compliment the friendly folks working here. And the location, at historic Kilkenny Plantation, is unbeatable.
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Kilkenny, Circa 1845, Bryan County
Overlooking Kilkenny Creek (sometimes referred to as the Kilkenny River), Kilkenny (pronounced “Kill-Cainey”) was the 662-arcre property of Thomas Young (1733-1808) beginning around 1765. Young was the son-in-law of the property’s original owner, James Maxwell, Jr. As Thomas Young was a Loyalist, Killkenny was confiscated from him through the 1778 Acts of Attainder and sold to George Cubbedge. Intervention by Young’s friends returned the property to him, though he was prohibited from voting or holding office for 17 years.
Young’s executors sold Kilkenny to Charles W. Rogers in 1836; Rogers then conveyed the property to his son, the Reverend Charles W. Rogers, Jr., and secured a nearby plantation, Cottenham, for his other son, William M. Rogers. The plantation was used primarily for the production of Sea Island cotton. Little is known of the Rogers family today, though it is thought that Reverend Rogers spent very little time here. In 1850, although Rogers 125 slaves were enumerated in the census, he himself did not appear as a citizen of Bryan County. His plantation primarily produced food crops for the slaves. By 1860, the plantation was producing more cotton than any other in the county and the value of the property had increased five-fold, to $30,000. 153 slaves were enumerated in the 1860 census, but Rogers was still not listed as a citizen of Bryan County. By 1874, Kilkenny had grown to 3,500 acres and was sold to James M. Butler. From this date onward, the property changed hands five times. When acquired by James H. Furber in 1890 the Kilkenny Club was established. (Locally, and on some maps, the area is still known as Kilkenny Club or Kilkenny Fishing Camp). A prominent later owner was Tennessee governor John I. Cox, who sold it to Henry Ford in 1931. Ford restored the property around this time, and it was apparently one of his favorites.
The house is unusual in this area because it’s neither Plantation Plain nor Sandhill Cottage style. The house, built with a four- over-four central hall plan, it’s weatherboarded on three sides and features vertical boards on the front. The main gable features a small widow’s walk. The most unusual feature of the house, though, is the placement of ten small vertical (eyebrow) windows between the roof eaves and the porch roof.
The kitchen (above photo) is among the most important remaining antebellum outbuildings on the Georgia coast. Though the exterior has been weatherboarded to match the house, the interior remains virtually untouched. Pegged beams are visible and a sleeping loft reachable by stairs ascending the chimney remains.
An oak driveway, or alley, is one of the most impressive features of the property, with many ancient specimens remaining.
This is the view of Kilkenny Creek looking south from Kilkenny Bluff, in front of the house.
http://focus.nps.gov/GetAsset?assetID=0f3e7596-94a0-444c-ba36-0a48064f3159
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Gulf Station, 1930s, Midway
Grady White’s garage on US 17 in Midway stays busy, so I was glad to get a shot on a Sunday. I’ve been told it dates to the 1930s and didn’t begin as a Gulf station, but I can’t confirm that. I wish the sky had been more cooperative, but it seemed appropriate for the shot. There’s been one form or another of automotive service at this location for over 100 years. Amazing. And for many years, the station was the place to obtain the key to historic Midway Congregational Church, located just across Old Sunbury Road from the station.
I can’t find a reference to the old station on the National Park Service’s nomination form for the Midway Historic District, but it probably wasn’t seen as an asset in 1973 when the form was compiled. Today, I believe it should be included in the historic district.
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