124 Abercorn Street

Savannah, GA

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History

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            The Owens-Thomas house was designed by the well-known architect, William Jay, in 1819 (Telfair). It was built in the very rare Regency style and is considered by many to be a textbook example of the style. The first residents were the Owens family which was head by George Welshman Owens (Telfair). Owens and wife, Sarah, had six children and nine slaves (Telfair). He was a man of many talents who dabbled in politics, planting, and law (Telfair). By 1840, the number of enslaved individuals caring for the property had risen to fourteen (Telfair). The Owens house remained in the family until 1951 when it was donated to Telfair Museums by Margaret Gray Thomas, Owens' granddaughter (Telfair).

            The house has the honor of being the first house museum in the city of Savannah (Telfair). Today, the home is on The National Register of Historic Places (Telfair). Daily tours allow visitors to interpret how various rooms would have been utilized by the Owens family (Telfair). It also allows visitors to tour the slave quarters and to bask in the sunshine in the expansive garden (Telfair). The wrought-iron balcony is noteworthy as it is said that Marquis de Lafayette used it for an address in the 1820's (Telfair). 

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The Project

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The architectural elements we are working with

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The Scanning

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                  For this project we met up at the Telfair Museum. Since we were scanning smaller artifacts, our equipment this time consisted of the Artec Studio 12 Professional laser and camera scanner, a lazy-suzan, and a computer. The Faro Focus scanner is much more suited for large projects such buildings. In attendance was myself, Professor Keller, fellow student Mathew "Hew" Evans, and a Telfair Museum assistant named Margaret Hallinan. Margaret was present to handle all of the artifacts with gloved hands. I guess you could call her the Vanna White of the Telfair! The process for scanning was more complicated than one might think. We discovered that it was very easy to go out of bounds. This meant that the light would go from green (in bounds) to red (out of bounds). 

                 The scanning began by putting the artifact on a lazy-suzan. There was a neutral colored blanket underneath to provide a solid background. The range needed to be somewhere between 248-222. The depth of field centralized the scanner to a specific point. Even though the scanner tracks the scans, they still need to be stitched together. It was somewhat like a balancing act because you had to pull the scanner out when parts of the artifact were close to you, but you did not want to pull it so far out that the scanner would become out of bounds. 

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