The Mercer-Williams House and the Book That Changed Savannah

429 Bull Street, west side of Monterey Square. The most famous private residence in Savannah, not for its Italianate architecture — which is excellent — but for what happened inside on May 2, 1983, when antiques dealer Jim Williams shot his young associate Danny Hansford. John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil turned the house and the city into literary landmarks.

It's a museum now. Tours of the main floor show the rooms furnished much as Williams left them: silver, porcelain, European antiques, the particular atmosphere of a home that was loved obsessively by someone with extraordinary taste and complicated judgment. The parlor is the room where it happened. The guides handle this with a Savannah blend of discretion and candor that is itself a cultural artifact. They tell you, show you the room, and let the silence do the work.

The book turned Savannah into a tourist destination that no chamber of commerce could have manufactured. Whether that was good for the city depends on who you ask and what time of year you visit.