Restaurant: Oyster Hall, Savannah
A precinct of pleasure, a house of human felicity, an accommodation of every gustatory wish and appetite: oyster hall. Whether one craved the sublimely pure essence of West Indian turtle simmered and clarified to a consume (available daily from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm), or hungered for the unctuous sea island oyster bedded on its shell, Charles Middleton served your wants. The master of the house was a personable, immaculately dressed and mannered brown man. His name suggested a Lowcountry origin, but Middleton hailed from New York City, coming to Savannah in 1821 opening Oyster Hall on the corner of Bull Street and Bay Lane a short walk from the Exchange. It was not a cellar like the oyster houses of Baltimore and Philadelphia, but a fully outfitted eating house “where may be had Oysters, roasted, stewed, fried or in the shell, and other relishes, served up at any hour” [“Oysters, Oysters,” Georgian (December 13, 1828), 3]. Besides oysters and relishes (side dishes), the hall offered seafood of all sorts, game, rare roast beef, ham, wines, and spirits.
Middleton had worked in New York, leaving in the year when the legendary oyster house keeper Thomas Downing was establishing his business. In Savannah Middleton did what Downing would do to insure supply, “having a boat constantly plying to the banks producing the largest and best oysters.” Like Downing he knew a recipe for pickled oysters that inspired delight. He produced jars of spiced, brined local bivalves for public purchase at the Hall and in Savannah’s groceries. He commanded a fair amount of credit, a rarity among the city’s free men of color. No doubt this derived from his ability to ship “a regular and constant supply of Oysters, sent to any part of the two States South Carolina and Georgia, put up to order.” [“Oyster Hall,” Georgian (October 19, 1829), 3.] Kegs filled with pickled shucked oysters and barrels packed with oysters in their shell traversed the country roads of Georgia and South Carolina.
In the Hall oyster lovers found places along trestle tables, dining clerestory style off of platters of shellfish, meat and vegetables. Patrons did not eat standing as in the cellars farther north. Middleton insured a regular round of diversions in the dining room, having a particular love of raffles—a gold watch—a horse & gig—a suit of clothes. Once a patron found a live fish, three and a half inches long, inside an oyster. This prompted an ichthyologic debate in the newspaper about the variety. The regulars at the Hall were a genteel, orderly company—and Middleton’s relations with them were friendly. At periodical intervals he published notices about abandoned coats, and misplaced umbrellas. No civic disturbance was recorded during the decade of the venue’s existence. Oyster Hall and Middleton appear briefly in Augustus Baldwin Longstreet’s Georgia Scenes, in the 1833 literary sketch “A Native Georgian.”
Oyster Hall operated from October to the middle of June. A week before his seasonal closure he published a noticed to creditors to settle accounts. [“C. Middleton,” Georgian (June 20, 1828), 3]. Middleton would leave the city in the third week of June, traveling to the market cities of the east coast, and to his clients in the Southeast. Because he maintained a rental carriage service for the city, he notified the public that a driver, horses and carriage would remain available during the summer when he was absent. In the second week of October he un-shuttered his building [“Oyster Hall,” Georgia (October 19, 1829), 3]. Over the 1829-1930 season, Middleton began to feel the effects of a slump in the cotton and timber economy; his many debtors neglected to pay their obligations. Debt sat on the books leaving Middleton vulnerable to his own creditors. Pleas in the papers did little to make his clients to settle. When he reopened Oyster Hall for the autumn season, he was in perilous financial straits. In November, he sold the business to William S. Luddington. The new owner promised to retain the bill of fare, add breakfast service, and offer pickled oysters as product. Yet all transactions in the new Oyster Hall offer its fare for cash exclusively—no credit [“Oyster House,” Georgian (November 19, 1830), 2. Middleton stepped away from hospitality, but kept up his supply business.
In November 1831 Middleton’s time away from the public became so irksome that he revived Oyster Hall, leasing Anderson’s three story brick tenement on the corner of Drayton and Bay Lane. The offerings remained the same as before—oysters “opened, in the shell, pickled and cooked in every possible way.” His roasts rivaled any hotel in the city. “Venison and Beef Steaks, Game and Relishes of every kind, hot and cold, prepared with equal dispatch.” [“Old Oyster Hall Revived,” Georgian (November 16, 1831), 3]. Middleton’s was a brave effort to regain paradise lost, but William Luddington had secured much of his old clientele in the old familiar space. Since Luddington had continue Middleton’s original bill of fare, the product was much the same in the two halls. Isaac Minnis, who loaned Middleton the money that enabled Middleton to revive Oyster Hall waited out the season. By May Minnis new that the resuscitation was temporary. The Hall was had gone deep in the red. Minnis called the note and on the first Tuesday in July of 1832 the Sheriff of Chatham County sold “sundry articles of Household Furniture; also one pair of grey and one pair bay Horses, 2 four wheel Carriages, and I set of Harness, 1 Gig, 1 Wagon and Harness, a 2 Horse Dray and the Stables in Bay-lane”. [“City Sheriff’s Sale,” Georgian (June 30, 1832), 3). Luddington’s Oyster Hall would remain into operation for an additional two years.
Sometimes the life of a splendid restaurant is regrettably short. The convergence of food, setting, host, and company forms an epicurean garden fated to fade when winter comes. Oyster Hall lasted a decade, and thrived particularly for the six years between 1824 and 1830. Other oyster houses sprang up and failed—Thomas Williams’s, Henry Lynch’s The Sign of the Bottle, R. W. S. Hewlett’s Oyster and Relish House—but the Hall was so famous that it lived for a time in two bodies.
The First Oyster Hall on the corner of Bull and Bay Lane is long gone. But the restaurant now standing Nine Drayton Street Savannah is surely Charles Middleton’s Oyster Hall #2.