Why it matters
Orleans Square is named for the Battle of New Orleans (1815) and sits in Savannah's western ward. Its most notable feature is a cast-iron fountain donated by Savannah's German immigrant community in 1989 in memory of the thousands of German settlers who came to coastal Georgia in the colonial and antebellum periods.
The fountain is a reminder that Savannah's history is more various than the plantation-and-cotton narrative usually suggests. German, Irish, Scots, Jewish, and free Black communities all shaped the city's character, and the western squares hold some of the most interesting traces of that complexity.
Every fountain in Savannah is a donation from someone who wanted to belong to the city.