Featured photos courtesy of Erin Clarkson/Savannah First Timer
By Eric Curl
Nov. 27, 2025 – The historic Savannah Cotton Exchange at 100 E Bay Street is for sale for the first time in 150 years, according to the real estate company advertising the property.
Engel & Volkers Savannah recently began listing the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own one of the city’s most treasured architectural landmarks.”
The 10,000-square-foot building is listed for $10 million.
Constructed in 1886, the brick structure was built when Savannah was the nation’s top cotton distributor, illustrated by the facade’s cotton motifs, according to the listing.
The patent of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin in 1794 allowed cotton plantations to spread further from the coast to grow short staple cotton, according to the Georgia Historical Society. The lucrative cash crop also increased the heavy dependence on slave labor by cotton-producing states and directly tied those states to the slave economy.
The Cotton Exchange later housed the Solomon’s Lodge and served as a repository of Masonic artifacts and papers.
The Exchange is believed to be one of the few structures in the world erected over an existing public street, according to the historical marker.
People often say the Cotton Exchange is “built on air” because the building sits over the Drayton Street Ramp, and you can actually walk or drive beneath it to access River Street, as reported by Erin Clarkson on her Savannah First Timer website.
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TOP POSTS
The Savannah Cotton Exchange, a historic landmark, is up for sale for the first time in more than a century.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the city. The city should buy it, with the help of grants and a public-private partnership, restore it and turn it into the South’s premier museum on the cotton and slave trade.
We don’t need another riverfront hotel. We don’t need another downtown mall peddling silly t-shirts and overpriced trinkets to tourists. What we do need is an attraction that builds on our unique history. Highlighting our complicated and tragic history would be a bold statement at a time when the White House is trying to erase slavery from American history. Regardless of whatever happens to the Weeping Time site, the story of that horrifying event could be told in this museum, as well as many other episodes of this rich and largely untold history. This museum would complement Savannah’s existing Black history museums, including the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, the Owens-Thomas House and the Savannah African Art Museum, filling a gap that these worthy institutions don’t cover.
The asking price, $10 million, is steep. It would take a citywide effort, bringing together philanthropists, government and civic organizations, to raise the funds to buy and restore it. But a museum telling this important story of Savannah’s past would be a solid investment in our city’s future.