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I took this photograph a month and a half ago, when
I was visiting Savannah one afternoon while on vacation.
The original Savannah Cotton Exchange was built in
1872. To get an idea of just how immense a contribution that cotton made to the
Southern economy before the Civil War, remember that seven years after the conflict
left the entire region devastated, export revenues from the crop had reached
$40 million, and Georgia was, once again, the leading cotton producer in the
country.
This particular Savannah Cotton Exchange was erected in 1886 at 100 East Bay Street, making it one
of the first major buildings constructed completely over a public street.The architect, William G. Preston, a Bostonian,
was particularly active in the region around this time, having also designed
the DeSoto Hotel (since torn down for the Hilton DeSoto), a brick mansion just
south of Gaston Street, as well as the the Chatham County Courthouse (1889) and
the Guard's Armory (1893), now Poetter Hall, part of the Savannah College of
Art and Design.
A tiny insect from Central America, the boll weevil, had been sighted in Texas in 1892. By 1915, it had reached all the way across to Thomasville, Ga. Its impact was immediate—and ruinous. By 1923, cotton acreage in Georgia had plummeted to 2.6 million acres—half its 1914 peak—and would fall to only 115,000 by 1983. The pest would finally be eradicated a few short years after that, but not before having fundamentally altered the entire economy and way of life for a region.
Features of the Cotton Exchange include the use of red brick with a terra-cotta façade,
iron window lintels and copper finials and copings. Unfortunately, its
magnificence outlasted its useful life as a commercial structure. Although at
the time of construction cotton had helped make this part of Savannah “the Wall
Street of the South,” and even exactly a century ago over 5.2 million acres of
land in Georgia were allocated to the crop, it would all be different in a few
short years.
A tiny insect from Central America, the boll weevil, had been sighted in Texas in 1892. By 1915, it had reached all the way across to Thomasville, Ga. Its impact was immediate—and ruinous. By 1923, cotton acreage in Georgia had plummeted to 2.6 million acres—half its 1914 peak—and would fall to only 115,000 by 1983. The pest would finally be eradicated a few short years after that, but not before having fundamentally altered the entire economy and way of life for a region.
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