Historic Savannah Foundation recently announced that it has published Savannah Square by Square, a visually stunning coffee table book that combines beautiful photographs and artfully rendered pen and ink drawings of Savannah’s 22 squares with lively, historically accurate stories about these unique Savannah treasures. The book, which will be released in December, may be purchased online at a pre-publication discounted rate now through December 11, 2015, at www.myHSF.org.

The book features more than 300 beautiful color photographs of all 22 existing squares, two lost squares, and the “other squares,” Colonial Park Cemetery and Forsyth Park. The thoroughly researched narrative will provide a brief overview of each square and significant landmarks, when each was created, and for whom or what it was named. Author Michael Jordan, designer and project manager Mick McCay, and photographers Les Wilkes, Phil Hodgkins, and Connie McCay have collaborated to make this book something all who love this city will want to own.

“We are delighted to have teamed with Historic Savannah Foundation to publish the first edition of this book,” Jordan said. “I’ve traveled to more than 40 countries, and made documentaries in different places, and I’ve never found anywhere in the world that is as special to me or as amazing as the squares of downtown Savannah.”

In 1733, Georgia's founder James Oglethorpe laid out a new kind of city in the midst of a virgin forest. The unique city plan Oglethorpe created -- a repeating pattern of squares encircled by homes and public buildings -- has provided a template for close to three centuries of growth.

Today there are 22 historic squares in downtown Savannah, adorned with stately mansions, soaring church spires, magnificent monuments, and hundreds of historic homes. More than 12 million people visit Savannah each year to stroll through the squares and soak up the ambiance of the moss-draped live oaks and sun-dappled azalea bushes.

“Too often we think that just because a subject has been written about -- even several times -- that the subject is dead. Well, that’s hardly the case with Savannah Square by Square,” said Daniel Carey, president and CEO of Historic Savannah Foundation. “This new book is a refreshing and respectable guide to Savannah’s most treasured resource -- the Oglethorpe Plan and its famous squares. Outstanding photography is coupled with thoughtful commentary, and this can only help deepen the appreciation of Savannah for both visitors and residents. We need more such books about Savannah that ask a bit more of the reader in terms of how they understand, enjoy and respect the unique resource it is.”