Moon River Brewing Company

Before it poured beer, this building poured history.

It opened in 1821 as the City Hotel... Savannah's very first. Designed by William Jay, the same architect behind some of this city's finest buildings, it was the place to be seen if you were anyone passing through Savannah in the early 1800s.

Winfield Scott stayed here. The Marquis de Lafayette stayed here. So did the first three commodores of the United States Navy.

The naturalist John James Audubon lived here for six months, trying to sell Savannah's wealthy residents his paintings of American birds.

This building also held the city's first post-office branch and a branch of the Bank of the United States. For decades, it was the beating commercial heart of Savannah.

Then the yellow-fever years came, and the hotel became something else entirely.

More than once, when fever swept through the city, the City Hotel converted its guest rooms into hospital wards. Hundreds of people are said to have died on the upper floors during those outbreaks... including many children, too young and too weak to survive what the fever did to the body.

The hotel closed for good in 1864, just as Sherman's army approached Savannah. Afterward, the building sat largely empty and forgotten for much of the next century before reopening in 1999 as the brewery standing here today.

That is a great deal of history for one building to hold.

Savannah believes it hasn't released a single year of it.

Ask the staff about Toby, and they may lower their voices.

He is most often reported in the basement... a shadow standing at the edge of the light, gone the moment anyone turns to face him directly.

Cold spots appear without explanation.

Voices are heard with no visible speaker.

Employees working alone in the basement after closing have learned not to linger.

Then there is the story of James Stark.

In 1832, Stark became involved in a bitter public feud with a Savannah doctor named Philip Minis. Inside this hotel, Stark reportedly called Minis a coward in front of witnesses.

Minis did not allow the insult to stand.

The confrontation ended in gunfire outside on Bay Street, and Stark did not survive. Minis later stood trial for the killing and was acquitted.

Staff and guests have since reported the sensation of being pushed or shoved from behind by something they cannot see, particularly near the place where the confrontation is believed to have begun.

Some believe it is Stark... still angry, still searching for the fight that ended his life.

So when your glass rattles on the table and nobody has touched it...

when the basement suddenly turns cold...

remember everything this building has been.

A grand hotel.

A hospital for the dying.

A place where one man's pride got him killed on the sidewalk outside.

Order carefully tonight.

You may not be the only one standing at the bar.