Fort Pulaski Part One: Architecture

Returning to my series of blogs on the trip my husband and I took to Georgia in Spring 2026, this will be a three-part blog on Fort Pulaski.

Fort Pulaski – Not Boring!

I admit it, I was thinking a military fort might be a bit boring to visit, but boy was I wrong! Fort Pulaski has a lot going for it. In fact, there’s so much to say about this fort, that I have divided my post about it into three parts: architecture, history, and ghosts.

Fort Pulaski is located on Cockspur Island, at the mouth of the Savannah River, twenty minutes outside the city. We went there because it was one of those historical sites you should really visit while you’re there. My husband had no doubt it would be worth it, while I consoled myself by thinking of the promised nature walks around the fort. However, when we parked at the visitor center, it was so windy and cold that the idea of nature walks went right out the window!

Architecture

The first thing that struck me was the beautiful brick architecture. Before doing a self-guided tour, we listened to a ranger give a 40-minute talk about the building of Fort Pulaski. I wish I had recorded the ranger’s name to give him credit–he was so knowledgeable!

By the way, I highly recommend going to a ranger talk and recording what is said.  Later I transcribed my recording and also took notes from various sources like this National Park Service video to glean the following facts: (Any mistakes in the telling are mine.)

Ten Stockpiles of Facts about the Building of Fort Pulaski

1. Fort Pulaski was built on Cockspur Island, which at the time, was one-mile long and one-mile wide. The island sat six feet above sea level (it’s now eleven feet above sea level). Construction began in 1829 and finished in 1847.

2. It took eighteen years to complete the fort–by hand! This was due to ongoing dangers like hurricanes (and cleaning up after the hurricane), disease (malaria, cholera), rattlesnakes, water moccasins, and alligators. They tried to avoid working in the summers because of the heat. Every year they also had to fight congress for a new budget.

3. In 1833, they named the fort Pulaski in honor of Count Casimir Pulaski. He died fighting the Regulars at the Battle of Savannah during the American Revolution.

4. Fort Pulaski is a single-story, five-sided brick fort (but not a pentagon) made from 25 million bricks. It is surrounded by a moat 30 – 48 feet wide, with an average depth of seven feet.

5. Fort Pulaski has 68 vaulted, arched rooms called casemates. These were supposedly bomb proof and used as positions from which to fire cannon, or as living quarters for soldiers. They were also used to house prisoners, and for storage. The walls at the center of the casemates are 7.5 feet thick. The walls housing the powder magazines are 12 – 15 feet thick.

6. The fort sits on a foundation of 5,600 wooden pilings: one-foot in diameter, 60 to 80 feet deep. They used three drop hammers, positioned on tripods with 2000 lb granite blocks, to pound in the standing poles (made of Georgia Yellow Pine). The pilings were then topped by two layers of grillage–platforms made from individual timbers. All of these layers had to be carefully leveled. The 30-inch grillage lay two feet below the water line. They did this on purpose so everything would be covered in mud. Mud protected the pilings by keeping the air out, so it didn’t deteriorate. The mud around the pines also dried firmly enough to become a support assembly for the 60-80 foot pilings. This underwater foundation was then topped with a brick foundation.

7. The fort’s roof is supported by a series of brick arches. Arches spread the weight and can withstand the impact of cannonballs. The pillars of each arch are supported by a reverse arch from underneath.

8. They had to do angle cuts on the bricks within each arch. A single cut was made on every brick, because each angle was different.

9. The foundation and fort were so well built that after nearly 180 years, there are still no cracks in the walls from the settling of the foundation! The only cracks in the fort are from cannon and rifle shots made during the 1862 Civil War battle for Fort Pulaski.

10. During the 1830’s and ’40’s, an intricate rain-water collection system was designed for Fort Pulaski. The sod-covered roof of the fort was actually built over a six to eight-foot deep trough.The trough was made from a layer of crushed oyster shells (bought from local fishermen), topped by white sand (from Tybee Island), covered with a layer of dirt, and then topped by grass. Rainwater fell through the sod and was naturally filtered through this trough.

The roof’s seeping water then ran down through each pillar of the fort via 2 ½ inch water pipes. About two feet below the floor was an aqueduct, about 3 foot square, that ran all the way around the base of the fort. Water flowed through the aqueduct to ten storage cisterns located beneath the floor of the fort. The cisterns are arched on the top and bottom for strength, and made of brick. Each of the cisterns could hold 20,000 gallons of rain water for a total of 200,000 gallons.

Unfortunately, the rain-water system is no longer functional at Fort Pulaski due to decades of water damage and needed repairs. Read this article to find out more.

For more information

There is so much more that can be said about the architecture and building of Fort Pulaski. Here is a good article by the National Park Service that talks about points of interest. And here is another one about Cockspur Island being engineered land.

But even better is making an actual trip to visit Fort Pulaski. It’s worth it!

Stay tuned for the second part of this post on the Civil War battle for Fort Pulaski.