An Italianate mansion where its owner shot a man in 1981

War halted the house General Mercer never occupied

Mercer House is now the Mercer Williams House Museum, an Italianate mansion at Bull Street, facing Monterey Square. It is built of deep rose brick, with iron balconies and tall French windows on three sides. The architect John S. Norris designed it for General Hugh W. Mercer, the great-grandfather of the songwriter Johnny Mercer. Work began in 1860, but the Civil War stopped it. Union soldiers camped in Monterey Square during the occupation of Savannah and used building materials from the unfinished house for shelter. Mercer sold the half-built house, and a cotton merchant named John Randolph Wilder finished it around 1868. No one named Mercer ever lived there.

The house passed through years of quieter use. For a stretch of the 20th century it served as the Savannah Shriners' Alee Temple, then stood empty for almost a decade.

Jim Williams restored the house, then shot a man in it

In 1969, Jim Williams, an antiques dealer and one of Savannah's most dedicated restorers, bought the house for $55,000. He spent two years bringing it back to life and ran his antiques restoration business from the basement. Williams became known for his lavish Christmas parties, held every year on the eve of the Savannah Cotillion Club's debutante ball.

On May 2, 1981, Williams shot and killed Danny Hansford, a 21-year-old man, in the study. Hansford had knocked over an 18th-century English grandfather clock during an argument. Williams said Hansford pulled a gun on him first. Williams stood trial four times over eight years, the only person in Georgia history tried that many times for the same killing. A jury finally acquitted him in 1989, after the trial moved to another city.

A rodent report briefly closed the block in 2026

In February 2026, Savannah police and firefighters responded to a report of a rodent near the museum. They found nothing and reopened the block within the hour.

Today, Mercer House stands on the southwest side of Monterey Square, where Bull Street meets West Gordon and West Wayne Streets. Guided tours cover the first floor, filled with Williams's antiques, English and American portraits, and Chinese export porcelain. The upstairs study, where Williams lived and died, is not part of the public tour.

Williams died in the study where he had killed Hansford

Jim Williams died of a heart attack in 1990, in the same study where he had shot Hansford. His sister, Dorothy Williams Kingery, inherited the house and later opened it to the public. The story of the killing became the subject of John Berendt's 1994 book, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," and the 1997 film that followed. Visitors today can tour the ground floor, now run as a museum of Williams's furniture and porcelain collection.

Dorothy Kingery kept the house instead of selling it

Dorothy later put the house up for sale with a price near $9 million, later cut to about $7 million. She kept it instead, and Clint Eastwood eventually talked her into letting his film crew shoot inside for the 1997 movie. She set one condition: no filming of "the unpleasantness." The crew built that scene on a soundstage at Warner Bros. Instead.

The house still carries its older, stranger stories. In 1969, a boy climbed onto the roof chasing pigeons and fell, landing on the spiked iron fence along West Gordon Street. One prong broke in the fall and has since been replaced. An earlier owner, long before Williams, is said to have tripped over a banister inside and later died from the concussion.