Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace
Georgia > Coastal Georgia > Chatham County > Savannah
The birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, was the first designated National Historic Landmark in Savannah.
I first visited the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace on the corner of Oglethorpe Avenue and Bull Street in downtown Savannah many years ago when my oldest daughter was a Girl Scout. Her troop had saved their cookie money for six years for that trip to Savannah and a day at the Birthplace as it is called. I remember a stately but friendly house and a dozen or so fifth grade girls dressed up in Victorian smocks, making crafts, playing Victorian parlor games, and learning about the woman who had started the Girl Scout organization back in 1922.
Daisy, as Juliette Gordon Low was called, developed a life long interest in the arts as a girl. She wrote poems, sketched, wrote and acted in plays; and later became a skilled painter and sculptor. She founded the Girl Scouts on March 12, 1912, to help “build girls of courage, confidence and character who make the world a better place.”
The large Savannah home, which was built in 1818, was saved from demolition by Girl Scouts USA in 1953. Restored to its 1886 glory — the time when young Daisy was about to become a bride — the house is now known as the Juliette Gordon Low Girl Scout National Center. It serves as a national Girl Scout program center, an educational facility for youth, and an historic house museum for the public. It is authentically furnished with family pieces and 19th-century decorative art. The handsome English Regency townhouse was designated a registered National Historic Landmark in 1965, the first in Savannah.
Since it was officially dedicated in 1956, the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace has had more than two million visitors from around the world — Girl Scouts as well as others who just want to learn more about the remarkable Daisy and visit a beautifully restored Savannah home. Of that two million, I know of about a dozen young girls and mothers who enjoyed a day in its comfortable confines.
Read more about Savannah, Chatham County and other National Historic Landmarks in Georgia, or find other activities in the Coastal Georgia Travel Region here at Brown’s Guides.
Tags: Girl Scouts, historic home, Juliette Gordon Low, museum, Savannah