From our interview with Litchfield Carpenter and Washington Dender:

Washington: I always had an interest in preservation. I read a lot of history books when I was a child and minored in history when I was in college. My parents bought an old staircase and a Palladian window and wood floors, things like that, and had an architect design a house around them.

Litchfield: I had a very similar background with my interest in history early on, and it’s primarily through family. My mother loved to tell stories about family history. You start to get some of the social history of what people were doing and how they lived in houses. Then I got involved in American antiques and furniture, so it was more through the objects and what they say about social history.

Washington: We’re always doing some sort of preservation. We’re willing to live with things in order to preserve them rather than try to change the footprint of the house.

Litchfield: Shortly after we bought it, I went to the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah and tried to find a bit of background about the house and who had lived there. My background is [in] curatorial work with a museum in Tennessee, but [even so,] it was difficult to find information.

Gordon Row, circa 1852–1853, was built as a speculative group of 15 brick homes in the then-new upscale residential area of Savannah just north of grand Forsyth Park. During this time in Savannah many of the homes were built by enslaved laborers as well as free Black workers and recent Irish immigrants. Savannah had a large population of enslaved workers living in town whose owners lived elsewhere but would hire them out for various craftsmen jobs as brick masons, plasterers, wood carvers, cooks, etc.

We did find some census records that we think pertain to our house, which listed one or two young Irish girls in service. Savannah had a large Irish population and a large number of Irish immigrants, so this would not be uncommon. We do not have any records about any enslaved persons working at 111 West Gordon pre–Civil War.

Washington: Through the census records, we found that it was usually a single family who lived there [before it became apartments in the 20th century]. These families were generally white-collar professionals who worked in the businesses in Savannah.

Litchfield: I found an advertisement for the row of houses we are in from when they were first built. It talks about how they’ve got cast-iron mantels. They’ve got speaking tubes, running water, and gaslights on the first two floors. We still have the cast-iron mantels in our parlor area. It’s nice to read what was there in the 1850s and then go back and say, hey, we have the mantel right here.

Washington: Every preservationist makes choices about what works for you and how true to the building you want to be. We have heating and air-conditioning, but we were sure to preserve the outline of all parts of the house and to preserve the overall structure.

Litchfield: When we started to convert the apartments into one house, we [began] working with John Deering and Josh Bull of Homeline Architecture. We got their names after talking to a number of folks, including the head of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. We liked their ideas and direction. They understood that we didn’t want a big master bathroom or huge additions. Homeline got where we were going, and we worked with them to draw out the interior plans. Our initial vision was to keep the front part open and as accurate as it can be to the 1850s and make the rest of the house very comfortable.

We were fortunate to have had Sam Carroll of Carroll Construction recommended to us as the general contractor. He and his team were super easy to work with and they have a very sensitive eye toward historic preservation. Our friends John and Susan Thompson from Kitchen Living in Tryon, North Carolina, made all the kitchen and bath cabinetry. They also drove it down to Savannah and installed it.

Washington: We identified with some of the lifestyle of the 19th century, when the house was built with a nice generous living room and a generous dining room. We tried to have good entertaining spaces. Our idea for our sitting room is two [comfortable] chairs and a stack of books. And then good couches and places where somebody can put a drink and sit down and settle in and really chat.

We like a room or space that has some depth to it, that’s more than just a couch, a table, and a chair. You want it to have items that are meaningful. There’s a couch that we bought together. There’s a chair we got from when we lived in North Carolina, and there’s a lamp that came from my mother’s house.