You can’t miss the massive globe looming over the surrounding buildings if you’re crossing DeRenne Avenue and White Bluff Road. The Savannah Gas Company built the sixty-foot-diameter natural gas storage tank in 1957 and used it for that purpose until the 1970s. Ted Turner’s father, R.E. Turner, Jr., is said to have given the company the idea to paint it to look like a globe. It was painted to look like a school globe by Leo Berkemeier and another man. According to his grandson, Berkemeier fell from the structure during the job, sustaining serious injuries. The original paint job depicted all of the national boundaries, but it was later painted to resemble Earth as it appears from space.
International mural artist Eric Henn repainted the globe in 1998, including Hurricane Floyd threatening the Georgia coast. Still, it had to be fixed after it was pointed out that the hurricane was spinning the wrong way. The globe has appeared in a few films, including Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck’s Forces of Nature and Michael Caine and Katie Holmes’ Dear Dictator.
You’d be correct if you thought the massive landmark would be a natural point of reference. Many Savannah residents who return to town rely on the globe to tell them they’ve arrived. Until recently, there was a signpost next to the globe that displayed the distance in miles to various locations worldwide, including Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Mumbai.
