This year, SCAD President and Founder Paula S. Wallace inducted five new women into the Savannah Women of Vision, a program that celebrates key female figures whose ideas, leadership and service have shaped the community of Savannah. This weekly column will attempt to share a little more of the stories behind each of the fifteen women whose gold portraits hang on either side of the Arnold Hall Theater.
When Sehila Mota Casper, alumna of historic preservation, honored Mary Lane Morrison at the 2018 Women of Vision Ceremony, she said “in scholarship, photography and historic documentation, Mary Lane Morrison’s curiosity and foresight benefits us all for generations to come…she rendered a loving history of Savannah.”
On August 15, 1907, Mary Lane Morrison was born in Savannah to Mills Bee Lane, Sr. and Mary Comer Lane. She left Savannah only briefly to attend Smith College. After her graduation, she returned to the Hostess City
She began to study Savannah’s unique layout and architecture and documented buildings, parks and squares. Her photographs of the city were shown at the 1929 World’s Fair in Barcelona. She also maintained the names of architects and construction dates for buildings all over Savannah. Combined with newspaper clippings and Savannah City Council minutes that Mary Lane collected, transcribed and filed, she created a vital scholarly archive for the city.
On May 10, 1941, she married Howard J. Morrison, a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The couple had three children, Howard, Jr., Mills and Mary.
Mary Lane was a member of many important historical preservation societies throughout the city, state and nation. She served on the Board of Curators of the Georgia Historical Society, then as a member of the National Society off the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Georgia, and finally, as a director of the Victorian Society in America.
For her active participation in Savannah’s preservation community, the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation gave her the Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Preservation award. They lauded her work as having “a major impact in documenting the architecture of Savannah. Virtually every building’s date of original construction is known as wells the name of the builders, with specific references to date of construction and appropriate architectural style.”
She wrote the definitive biography of John S. Norris, a Savannah architect who is most famous for the Massey Heritage Center, the Andrew Low House, the U.S. Customs House, and SCAD’s own Morris and Norris Halls. After her work on “John S. Norris: Architect in Savannah 1846-1860,” she continued to write and became a contributor and the editor of “Historic Savannah: A Survey of Significant Buildings in the Historic and Victorian Districts of Savannah, Georgia.”
She died at the age of 86 on July 16, 1994 and is buried in Bonaventure Cemetery next to her husband. Her legacy of celebrating the historical and architectural legacy of Savannah lives on through her family, who established the Mary Lane Morrison Endowment in her honor in 1995. Each of her children have also received the Georgia Trust’s Preservation Award for Excellence for the Lebanon Plantation, a long-time family home.
Mary Lane’s insight and commitment to preserving the architectural history of Savannah has not only helped the tradition of historical preservation in Savannah grow into the celebrated art form it is today, but also our understanding of the history behind the Historic District.
By Elena Burnett.
Elena Burnett is the Editor-in-Chief of District. She’s a writing major who will graduate in 2019.
