Website: http://www.flanneryoconnorhome.org/
Physical address: 207 East Charlton Street, Savannah, GA
Phone number: +1 912 233 6014
Business hours: 1pm-4pm daily (closed Thursdays and major holidays)
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Southern essayist and short story writer, (Mary) Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, GA, in 1925. Her childhood home, where she lived with her parents, Edward O’Connor and Regina Cline O’Connor, until 1938, stands on the edge of Lafayette Square and has been opened to the public as a museum of her life. Restored to its Depression-era state, the museum is unlike the majority of the house tours available in Georgia, focusing on a middle-class existence during a time of great financial struggle, rather than the illustrious plantation homes and mansions for which the South is famous.
Much of the furniture inside the home is original, as Regina put it into storage when the family left Savannah and the museum was opened less than 30 years after Flannery’s death. Photographs of the author as a child decorate the family’s living area, bearing witness to her precocious nature, and items such as young Mary’s baby carriage and Kiddie Coop (a mechanism for keeping the mosquitos off) give visitors a sense of closeness to the writer and her family. Some of her childhood books, complete with brief reviews (such as “not a very good book”) pencilled in the front page are also on display.
Flannery famously once wrote that there would be no biographies of her because she had lived her life between her house and the chicken yard, but it was her love of birds that first brought her into the public’s eye. At the age of six, while still living in Savannah, Mary trained one of her mother’s chickens to walk backwards. This miraculous achievement attracted the interest of the Pathé News, which sent a camera crew to investigate. In assisting the chicken, “little Mary O’Connor” made her screen debut, an event which she maintained was the highlight of her life.
Visitors to the home can see the garden where Flannery’s training endeavours took place and enjoy the stained-glass windows inside that depict her favourite birds, peacocks.
Flannery’s life as an adult is captured in Andalusia, the museum house in Milledgeville GA, where she lived with her mother after being diagnosed with lupus. A series of Little Free Libraries known as the Flannery O’Connor Book Trail connects the two properties.
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