James Edward Oglethorpe founded Savannah in 1733 on Yamacraw Bluff as the first town of the British colony of Georgia. The site stood within the homeland of Muscogee peoples, and diplomacy with Tomochichi and the Yamacraw helped the colony survive, though British settlement ultimately expanded Native dispossession. Oglethorpe's plan organized wards around central squares, with trust lots for civic uses and tithing lots for houses, gardens, and shared defense. New wards extended the pattern as the city grew, producing an adaptable urban framework rather than a single finished colonial blueprint.

Georgia's founders initially restricted slavery, but the colony legalized it in 1751 and became deeply involved in plantation agriculture. Savannah's port shipped rice, indigo, and later cotton produced by enslaved labor while merchants, artisans, sailors, free and enslaved Black residents, immigrants, and religious communities built a complex city. British forces captured Savannah during the American Revolution and repelled a Franco-American assault in 1779. Fires, epidemics, hurricanes, and economic cycles repeatedly destroyed or replaced buildings even as the ward-and-square system guided rebuilding.

Cotton wealth reshaped the nineteenth-century city through warehouses, churches, townhouses, public buildings, and landscaped squares. Enslaved people were sold in Savannah and worked in domestic, industrial, maritime, and skilled occupations. Union forces occupied the city in December 1864 after Sherman's March to the Sea. Emancipation opened new institutions and political possibilities while white violence and segregation constrained Black freedom. Sites associated with the First African Baptist Church, Beach Institute, King-Tisdell Cottage, and other communities broaden a history too often reduced to picturesque mansions and live oaks.

Twentieth-century road building, demolition, parking, and urban renewal removed squares and disrupted parts of the Oglethorpe Plan. The proposed demolition of the Davenport House in 1955 helped inspire the Historic Savannah Foundation, whose preservation and revolving-fund work saved many buildings. Savannah created local review controls, and the federal government designated a large National Historic Landmark District in 1966. Restoration preserved notable structures but sometimes privileged elite architecture or tourist appeal. Later projects have sought to restore lost portions of the plan while confronting housing affordability and displacement.

Savannah remains a living downtown of homes, businesses, worship, government, schools, museums, hotels, and public squares under mixed ownership. Streets and squares are generally free, while individual museums and tours charge admission. The district retains extensive eighteenth- through twentieth-century fabric and a remarkable plan, but restored façades, reconstructed elements, adaptive reuse, and significant losses must be acknowledged. Its frequently repeated claim as the nation's largest landmark district depends on definition and boundary comparison; the more durable significance is the survival and continuing evolution of the ward-and-square system within a socially layered city.