Historic Savannah Foundation saved buildings by buying, covenanting, and reselling them

In 1955, demolition of Savannah's 1870 City Market and the threatened demolition of the 1820 Davenport House for a parking lot galvanized seven women to found the Historic Savannah Foundation — at a time the city had no zoning protection for historic buildings and no public money earmarked to buy and hold them. The obvious paths were both dead ends: lobbying for a landmark ordinance would take years city officials showed no appetite for, and buying buildings outright to preserve them forever would exhaust any donor base within a handful of purchases.

The foundation instead treated ownership as a temporary tool rather than an end state: buy an endangered building, attach a permanent preservation covenant to the deed, then resell it to a vetted buyer committed to restoring it — and put the sale proceeds straight back into buying the next endangered building. Sources don't pin the exact year this specific revolving-fund structure was formalized versus the foundation's 1955 founding; it developed over the years immediately after.

Bought buildings, attached permanent covenants, resold to vetted buyers, reinvested proceeds — the covenant, not ownership, carried permanence, so one pool saved many.

The covenant, not ownership, carries permanence, so selling doesn't lose protection.

Proceeds from each sale fund the next rescue, so one pool saves many buildings.

Private buyers restore with their own money, stretching the foundation's capital.

When your fund is too small for all assets, don't spend it—revolve it: buy, stabilize, resell with a permanent covenant, reinvest.

By the mid-1960s the foundation had turned $38,000 in option purchases into $1 million of reinvestment in a single thirteen-acre district (Pulaski Square–West Jones Street), and over its first fifty years the foundation is credited with directly saving more than 350 Savannah buildings. The revolving-fund model was adopted by preservation groups across the US and is now standard practice taught throughout the preservation field — Historic Savannah Foundation's early version is generally credited as one of the first in the country, the origin of a technique rather than a copy of one.