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All research and commentary by Jefferson Hall

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So what was a factor… or a factorage? How exactly were the buildings of today’s River Street used? How have they changed and what personalities once roamed their creaky floors? Come explore the true history of River Street and its buildings.

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In the short span between 1852 and 1859 five large industrial ranges were erected on the riverfront, joining, merging with or replacing seven iconic older ranges erected between 1806 and 1813.

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In considering River Street it is important to recognize that the riverfront we see today was very much a creation of the 19th century; the 18th century riverfront has been utterly washed away by the tides of time.  I’ve made this observation elsewhere, but it bears repeating; there is no current structure or element of construction north of the south side of Bay Street that predates 1800.  No building, no wall, no foundations, no two stones glued together north of Bay Street date before the 19th century.  Our conception makes it old—it feels old—but the Belgian block pavement was laid down in the 20th century; the train tracks are likewise 20th century and were used until 1999.  And while the cobblestones on the ramps do date back to the 19th century, the pavement that runs the entire length of Factors’ Walk—though a nice homage—is modern stamped concrete.

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But what about the buildings?  The bulk of these buildings lining today’s River Street—superstructures more often referred to as ranges—were constructed between 1806 and 1877.

The 1850s left an indelible stamp on River Street, so much so that even the early 19^th century riverfront is sometimes difficult to find beneath the superstructures.  Rediscovering the early 19^th century buildings relies on clues one finds in advertisements that are found by keywords, like “fire proof stores”—such was how all of the early brick and stone structures on the waterfront were described in newspaper advertisements of the day.  While there may be nothing before 1800 represented in the brick and mortar of today’s River Street, there is an entire treasure trove of construction between 1800 and 1820 hiding in plain sight amidst the later structures, the remnant and record of what I call the “Stores Era.”

What is perhaps not understood today about these buildings of the riverfront and their use can be boiled down to two points….

• When we speak today of the River Street warehouses we are often looking at the wrong side of the street.  Outside of a few buildings on the western end of River Street, the buildings that stand today on River Street were not generally used for the storage of imports/exports.  The genuine warehouses and storage sheds were on the wharves, on the north end of today’s River Street, in more utilitarian structures that are long gone today. 

Take, for example, the 1884 Sanborn Map, depicting Commerce Row, which shows more square footage of development on the River side than the Bay Street side, and partly explains why the successor to Commerce Row—the 1890 Commercial Row and its eventual successor, 1981’s Hyatt—possessed the air rights to cross over River Street.

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While we’re examining maps let’s consider another from a few years later.  Below is the complete Riverfront edited together from the 1898 Sanborn Maps, demonstrating nary an empty foot of space north of the street.  The properties north of River Street were fully occupied with storage sheds, ladings and lumber and coal yards.  From east to west (or left to right) the map below depicts a Guano storage warehouse, followed by the E.B. Hunting Lumber Yard, C.H. Dixon Coal Yard & Shed, Gibson’s Wharf structures, Georgia Lumber Company Lumber Yard, a collection of various unidentified wharves and sheds gathered as a compound, T.F. Johnson Coal Yard, unidentified freight shed, Dixon & Company Lumber Yard and Savannah Cotton Press Association Lumber Yard and storage sheds.

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This postcard image, a rough contemporary of the map above, drives the point home further, as we gaze down into the massive Georgia Lumber Company Yard compound, following it eventually to the Gibson Lading sheds before the horizon clusters into indistinguishable rooftops.

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So if the buildings and structures crowding the north side of the street were the warehouses and sheds… what were the buildings that we see today on the south side of River Street used for?  That leads us to the second point…

• The buildings we see today were intended as commercial rental units.  The buildings on the south side of today’s River Street were the administrative offices (the “counting rooms”) and commercial space.  They were basically the strip malls of the early 19^th century.  Many of the merchants who had the buildings constructed never intended to occupy more than one or two rooms of the properties.  These ranges were the commercial and business parks of their day, home to any variety of leasable commercial, mercantile or office space.  Think of the shopping mart of today; a shopping plaza is typically built around some large anchor store—usually a grocery store—and the rest of the plaza is left as leasable retail space for ancillary and complimentary stores, all of these smaller properties help to offset the costs of the whole.

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Meet the Factors

Consider, for example, the previously-mentioned ancient buildings of Commerce Row.  In 1806 Joseph Habersham advertised his former office for lease:

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The following year, in 1807, Robert and John Bolton posted a “for rent” notice within their Commerce Row property as well.

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The advertisement above alluded to four small-business owners leasing within the property: John Jackson, William Woodbridge, Joseph Rice and Dr. Ewell… so what exactly did these four men do within the walls of the building… and were they factors?  Yes, they were.

• John Jackson began his store in 1804; it was something of a hardware store (with “ironmongery,” “crockery,” “window glass” and “paints”), crossed with a fabric store (with “superfine cloths,” “blankets and blanketing,” “hosiery” and “hats”), before he passed away abruptly in late 1807.
• William Woodbridge sold hardware as well, but his store also specialized in liquor and groceries.
• Joseph Rice, in the mean time, was a watchmaker and offered jewelry, swords, canes, pocket-books and elegant china.
• Dr. James Ewell moved to Savannah from Virginia in 1801; he operated a pharmacy and had moved his wholesale “medical warehouse” into the Bolton building in 1803.  An advertisement for James Ewell and his new warehouse:

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Clearly, the clientele leasing these properties was as diverse as the merchandise, goods and services they tendered.  The four factors above were not alone in Commerce Row; another tenant was Alexander Watt.  If his name sounds familiar it’s because Watt was active in the Atlantic slave trade in Savannah during the late 1790s.  As established in an earlier post, many of the Savannah merchants involved in the Atlantic slave trade were general importers, and not dedicated slavers.  By 1799 the Atlantic trade had ceased in Georgia, and most of these vendors simply returned to promoting alcohol, produce, fine fabric, sugar and shoes.

This was what Watt’s advertisements looked like in 1800, post-slave trade:

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From selling “prime young Negroes” in 1799 to selling “prime Negro Shoes” in 1800, Watt showed no less enthusiasm in promoting his inventory.  He died the following year, in November of 1801.

The commercial or business spaces within these stores—“tenements” was the common term for rental units—were short-term or long-term leases, and after a lease was up the lessee would choose either to re-up, expand, partner-up or move to a different retail location.  The below advertisement from 1810 illustrated what could happen to deadbeat tenants, as William Sawyer and John Mingledorf found themselves in arrears.

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In the late 18^th/early 19^th centuries Savannah newspapers were filled with advertisements headed “Factorage.”  It’s a word and an industry that is lost today to the recesses of time.  It made its earliest appearance in Savannah print in the summer of 1766, as William Moore took possession of “the wharf and stores formerly the property of Capt. Nicholas Horton.”

Factors were wholesale retailers, taking advantage of anything and everything being offloaded from a vessel at port.  Fruits, produce, alcohol, tobacco, fine linens and any type of exotica or item of interest would be taken in by a factor and offered to the public.  This was the new economy, and in the late 18^th century, a factorage was an easy business prospect that required little capital; one needed only to lease available space on these riverfront stores for a showroom and post an occasional ad in the paper offering practical items or exotica.

An advertisement claiming “a general assortment of goods” from a particular vessel usually meant the factor had entered into an agreement to take all of the remaining inventory from the vessel, effectively transferring its cargo hold to his shelves.  This was exactly how David Sandidge began his factorage in 1796, emptying out what remained on the ship Tammany, moving it into a Commerce Row tenement he had just rented and calling it a shop.

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Six months later he was advertising saddles, whips and canes swords; leaving the impression his shop’s inventory may have varied by the ship.  Sandidge, however, proved successful in his factorage and later doubled his retail space to include tenement 5 as well.  His advertisements fade away after 1800, and he died about 1803.

In the 1809 tax digest there are several individuals identified as “Factors.”  Tellingly, many of these factors were shown to own little or no property of their own; few owned wharves or land or even their own homes.  In my early years of studying Savannah history I had simply imagined these “factors of yore” to be some rarefied class of gentlemen like a long-forgotten secret society or guild; the reality was far less glamorous.  For every factor or merchant with means who met with enough success to sustain and flourish—Robert Bolton, the Joneses, the Telfairs, Richard Richardson (listed below, pre-Owens-Thomas House) or any of the import “merchant princes” that dominated Savannah society by the 1810s—there were far more often flame-outs who came and went with the rent cycle. 

Some men abandoned carefully crafted careers—seemingly on a whim—to become factors.  Take for example one John C. Lege; an established dance instructor who built his own dance and assembly hall at the corner of Bull and Broughton in 1822.  In 1825 his hall even hosted a formal Masonic dinner for Lafayette in 1825.  But the depression of the 1820s impacted his business; by 1828 Lege had shifted his career from dance instruction to a factor… only to return to his former profession some five years later, by 1833.  It was a new economy, but only a few navigated it successfully.

The full circle of John Lege:

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The August 27, 1799 Columbia Museum & Savannah Advertiser exemplifies this daring new economy of factors and factorages.  Here are six ads in sequence, all six either from factors advertising goods or introducing a new factorage businesses:

“Glazed chimney Tiles, Window Glass, 8 by 10, Madeira Wine,” “English cheese, pickles,” “shingles, 600 gallons fresh Orange Juice;” these were the diverse treasures offered by these factors of 1790s Savannah.

There are no elements of these factorage buildings surviving from the 1790s; the oldest surviving riverfront structure today is probably the William Taylor Stores, whose earliest elements date to 1806.  In terms of physicality, the early riverfront “stores” of the 1806-1819 period shared a similar architectural profile; so many went up in a very brief span of time:   the Taylor Stores, the Howard Stores, Commerce Row, the Archibald Smith Stores, one or more buildings of the Johnston Range, the Fraser Stores and elements of the Jones Stores and Hunter Stores all seem to have gone up between 1806 and 1819, and many overlapping with one another.  These structures were typically two, three or four stories, with pitched roofs, often a mélange of stone and brick in construction.  Two of these older properties stand intact today; the William Taylor Stores and the Archibald Smith Stores.  On the western end of River Street the Johnston Range isn’t a single structure but three different buildings merged together on its wharf, while on the eastern end of River Street Anderson’s eastern mart—though today much altered—remains the only example of a two-story range not rising above the bluff.  In many respects Commerce Row was the gold standard of this early 19th century architectural template; while it is gone, images remain.  Originally three levels, portions of the 1809 Howard Stores and the Fraser Stores form the lower levels of today’s 1859 Stoddard’s Lower Range; similarly, portions of the earlier iterations of the Jones and Hunter Stores still exist within the later 1857/58 Jones Superstructure.

By the 1850s “factorage” was a largely archaic term, and the character of the riverfront had changed significantly.  The wharf was no longer a speculative market of exotic world goods, but more practical staples for a town more poised towards large-scale industry; pitch, petroleum, guano and other fertilizer, grain, coal, lumber, ballast and industrial goods.  To offer a more contemporary analogy, the stores on the Bay had transformed from World Market… to Home Depot. 

Consider Commerce Row, which as we saw above hosted at the turn of the 19^th century stores offering hardware, liquor, rare fineries and a pharmacy; 70 years later much of the entire block was given over to the importation and sale of guano, fertilizer from the excrement of bats and seabirds.  From diverse exotic goods to manure in less than 70 years.

Of course, one cannot overlook the role of cotton played in the story of the riverfront.  As a correspondent to the Newark Daily Advertiser noted in a January 18, 1851 letter:   “The amount of business transacted here is very great, cotton is the great article of merchandise, and as you wander along the wharves, and examine the store-houses, you will see acre after acre covered with the great staple.” (quoted within Savannah Morning News, February 4, 1851)

Similarly, the buildings and expansions of the 1850s exhibited a different character… larger, more imposing, flat roofs, more urban and industrial.  These were not the simple quaint “stores” of 1806-1820.  There are no fewer than five range buildings on today’s River Street dating from the brief span between 1852 and 1859… an era which also coincided with the erection of the bluff’s retaining walls.  In short, River Street began to adopt the profile we would recognize in the 1850s.

Really, today’s River Street is largely a product of three epochs, with five intact buildings or ranges from the “stores” era of 1806-1820 (the Taylor Stores, the Smith Stores, Anderson’s Wharf 5 mart, and the Johnston & Williamson ranges), the five large ranges built between 1852 and 1859 (Claghorn & Cunningham, the two Jones ranges and the two Stoddard ranges) and an additional six buildings erected between 1874 and 1910 (United Hydraulic Cotton Press, Kelly’s Stores, Savannah Cotton Exchange, Tidewater Oil Range, City Hall & the Lowden Building ).

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A Survey of the Buildings of River Street

With a diverse mix of time periods, styles and building materials, River Street is a showcase of the 19th century.  Today’s old commercial and industrial buildings span more than a century between 1806 and 1910; the buildings hold stories, the stones bear legacy and tales have seeped into the mortar and lime.  Factor-merchants… while many of them had the vague description of “merchandise” attributed to them in the tax digests and were not actual landowners, those that did own a wharf often owned more than one.  Some wharves were built on previous iterations and grew in prosperity, while others peaked in their early years and never recovered.  One wharf building was constructed for a man who quickly failed as wharf owner only to encounter success creating a steam-boat company.  One wharf building was constructed for a six-year veteran foot-soldier in the American Revolution, while the neighboring wharf was built for a man whose sister had married into the family of Georgia’s Royal Governor, Sir James Wright.  One wharf was owned by a man killed in a duel with a former Savannah mayor, another was owned by a former Savannah mayor.  From established Savannah names (Jones and Telfair) to friendly outside carpetbaggers (Kelly), the buildings of River Street have stories to tell that would “amaze indeed the very faculties of eyes and ears.”

So let’s take an opportunity to better examine the legacy left today in the surviving—and some not surviving—structures of River Street, beginning at the east and moving to the west….

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Demolished eastern wharves (Wharves 8, 9 & 10 East of Lincoln)_

In looking at the 1884 Sanborn Map, it is clear that most of this eastern end of River Street is a construction that came long after publication of the map; not a single building depicted in the Sanborn image below still exists.  Even the Tidewater Oil building—the most easterly building found on River Street today—did not yet exist and was a product of the 1890s.  The Steam Rice Mill property, anchoring the east end of River Street since 1852, came up for sale in 1898.  Its purchase and removal finally offered the opportunity to open River Street into a thoroughfare, a goal of the city for more than 60 years.  “River Street to be Opened,” declared the March 24, 1898 Morning News.  “The property is something which the city has been endeavoring to secure for the last several years and various attempts have been made, but always without success.”   With no 19th century barrier left, River Street at last entered the 20th century fully traversable from end to end; no street in Savannah had taken so long or proved so challenging to open.

Peruse the map illustration below knowing that almost nothing illustrated on it exists today.

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504 – 516 East Bay Street, “Tidewater Oil Building” (Wharf Lot 7 & eastern portion of 6 East of Lincoln)

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1892 –  Built for Tidewater Oil Company

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The Tidewater Oil Company was incorporated in 1890, representing a merger between Savannah’s Blodgett, Moore & Co., Charleston’s Eber Blodgett & Co. and the Tidewater Oil Company of New York.  But mergers maketh and mergers taketh away; by 1893—barely one year after the building was completed—the Standard Oil Company had taken over Tidewater Oil, and by 1897 all use of the 1892 building was surrendered.

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402 – 410 East Bay Street, “Anderson Stores” (Wharf Lot 4 East of Lincoln)

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1835/36 –  Built for George Anderson & Co.

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George Wayne Anderson (c.1767-1847) was an active factor of the 1790s; displaced by the November 1796 fire, he and his family had moved into the home of his partner and co-factor Richard Wayne, until that too was consumed by the December 9 blaze just two weeks later.  By November of 1797 the co-partnership dissolved but Anderson continued to rent the property on Wayne’s Wharf. Richard Wayne owned Wharf Lot 10 and the neighboring Yamacraw Wharf Lot 1; as we will see, through economics, estates or circumstance many of Savannah’s prominent merchants ended up in possession of multiple wharf lots, any two usually distinguished from one another as “Lower”—being the eastern property or “Upper”—being to the west.

On November 1, 1799 Smith, Sons, Douglas Anderson & Thomas Flint announced they had “removed from the Wharf and Stores they lately occupied, to Wayne’s large and commodious Stores, where they continue the SHIPPING, FACTORAGE and COMMISSION BUSINESS.”.  The Smith, Sons, Anderson factorage is an interesting story; the company had begun in 1798 on the Johnston, Robertson & Co. wharf, the old Wharf Lot 16 West of Bull (which we will visit later).  They added Thomas Flint to the partnership later in the year; he procured a ship called the Minerva for their commercial pursuits, only for its registration to quickly come under scrutiny.  Flint claimed ownership and registered it under his name as a US citizen, only to have authorities suspect the Smiths owned it in part or in full.  Given that the Smiths were identified in the charge as “aliens, and subjects of his Britannic Majesty, residing and carrying on a trade as merchants in the city of Savannah,” US District Court sought in injunction; the partnership did not survive and by 1801 had announced dissolution.

So in 1799, as Smith, Sons, Anderson & Flint were moving to the west onto Wayne’s Wharf, George Anderson moved to the east, effectively switching wharves with the former and moving either into or adjacent to the Johnston, Robertson & Co. mart on Lots 1 & 16 West of Bull.  In December 3, 1799 Anderson posted an announcement in the newspapers that “The Subscriber has removed to the Wharf and Store, lately occupied by Messrs. Smith, Sons, Anderson and Flint, where he intends transacting business on COMMISSION, as herefore, and offers his services in that line, to his friends and others.”

A warning upfront… factors of this early era changed location almost as often as they changed partners.

By 1803 Anderson had graduated into ownership of his own wharf lot, neighboring Johnston, Robertson & Co., and advertisements of “Anderson’s Wharf” first appeared in the newspapers.  This, however, was not the site today where the Anderson Range stands today; Anderson was another in that line of Savannah merchants ending up in possession of multiple wharf lots (because one wharf is never enough).  This eastern, or “Lower,” wharf building of Lot 4 East of Lincoln was something of an afterthought; it was his upper Wharf Lot 2 West of Bull, site of today’s Lowden Building, that was his longer-held wharf and primary location.  In the 1810 tax digest his Wharf Lot 2 was valued at a modest $13,000; his eastern wharf properties did not exist yet.

The story of his Lower Wharf property at today’s 402-410 East Bay Street began as Anderson expanded—at first even further to the east than Wharf Lot 4—coming into possession of Wharf Lot 5 East of Lincoln and the adjoining western half of 6 in 1817 or 1818. 

This eastern lot & a half with buildings was valued at $14,000 in the 1819 tax digest, an inflated value typically consistent with a new construction on the site.  The value dropped to $12,000 in the 1821 and fell precipitously thereafter.  It was probably these c.1818 Anderson properties that were depicted years later on Wharf 5 as a two-story range on the 1871 and 1891 birdseye views.

Standing on the site today is a long, two-story range, composed of two adjoined buildings.  The Morrison book does not address the property, nor does the 2011 MPC Survey mark the range as historic, but the two-story range standing today at 411-429 East River Street seems consistent with the one illustrated in the 1871 Birdseye and the 1891 Birdseye, and appears little changed across its depictions in the 1884 Sanborn, and the 1888, 1898, 1916 and 1950 editions.  Though today heavily rehabbed, this low-profile, two-story, two-building range likely dates to 1818, was likely built for George Anderson—and as the only range today to not rise above the bluff—hearkens back to those earliest days of the 19th century riverfront before wharf properties were accessible above the bluff.

The value of his eastern wharf mart depreciated to $6000 by the 1826 tax digest, here it remained stagnant for the next six years, through the 1832 volume.  Anderson expanded westward to Lot 4 by 1827, meaning that today’s 402-410 East Bay Street—which sits atop 4—was the last of his riverfront properties built. 

In the tax digests of 1834 and 1835 the total of his eastern wharf holdings bumped up slightly to $7000, but by the 1836 digest the value had risen to $9000, and by 1837 $10,200.  This was probably the period that saw the construction of today’s building on Wharf 4; this three-story brick building appears to have been built between 1835 and 1836.  It should be pointed out, however, that his “2 Whfs & Marts & Impts Washington Ward” (1839 tax digest) of 4 and 5 still very much trailed the $18,000 valuation of his single Wharf 2 West of Bull.

In April, 1837, merchants Clark & Pelot were advertising from “Anderson’s new Stores” on Wharf 4.

Tenants William P. Clark and William Pelot began a partnership in November of 1836.  “The Subscriber having this day taken Mr. Wm. M. Pelot into partnership, the business will in the future be conducted under the firm of Clark & Pelot,” Clark wrote in a November 22 advertisement printed in the Savannah Republican.  “The Subscribers beg leave to inform their friends and the public, that they intend doing a Wholesale Grocery and Commission Business,” the partnership announced, running their business out of “Taylor’s Buildings,” on the west end of the riverfront.

Their business was not confined to groceries; at least one advertisement while they were housed in the Taylor Stores suggests their business was wide-ranging indeed…

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On February 11, 1737 Clark & Pelot announced their removal from the Taylor Stores.  “The undersigned have removed to Anderson’s new brick buildings on the Bay… where will be kept a constant and full supply of fresh and superior Groceries.”  But Clark & Pelot was dissolved in December, 1837; today a one-night stand might last longer than some factorage partnerships of the 19th century.

By 1840 the valuation of this Lower Wharf of 4, 5 and half of 6 had grown to $12,000, but it still trailed the $18,000 of Anderson’s Upper Wharf.  According to the 1843 tax digest Anderson owned three different residential properties, one in Percival Ward, one in Decker Ward, but his residence was on Congress Street, overlooking Johnson Square, and there Anderson died in May of 1847; he is buried at Laurel Grove.  In his last year of life his Lower Wharf holdings were valued at $15,000, still less than the $22,000 of his Upper Wharf.

In 1851 a man fell to his death from the third story of the Anderson Range.

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As a construction of the mid-1830s, the Anderson Stores represented a bridge—chronologically and architecturally—between the “stores” epoch of the 1800-1820 riverfront and the later, larger industrial ranges of the 1850s.

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302 – 316 East Bay Street, “Scott & Balfour Stores,” and “Andrew Low Range” (Wharf Lot 1 & 2 East of Lincoln)

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1823 – Eastern half (Wharf Lot 2) Built for Robert Scott and John Balfour

1823 – Western half (Wharf Lot 1) Built for Andrew Low & Company

By 1858 –  Additional level added

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“NOTICE, THE Copartnership of SCOTT, FISHER and SCOTT is this day disolved by mutual consent,” Robert Scott announced on November 5, 1805, adding that both of the Scotts could now to be found “at Messrs. MEIN, MACKAY & Co’s. counting house.”   By May of 1809 William Mein and Robert Mackay went their separate ways, announcing the dissolution of Mein & Mackay; Mein partnered with his son Alexander for a decade, and in February of 1819, following the elder’s retirement, Alexander Mein partnered with Robert Scott, announcing that their “counting house is on Hunter’s range.”   Margaret Hunter’s Range was a brand new structure at Reynolds Wharf Lot 5, which we will visit shortly.  By June 1, 1822 even this partnership bit the dust as Alex Mein and Robert Scott announced that “The Co-partnership of the subscribers expires this day by its own limitation, and the same is hereby dissolved.”   Scott wasted little time; six months later he announced another merchant partnership, this one with a one Mr. John Balfour.

Scott & Balfour operated a counting house out of the Jones Range at Wharf Lot 4 in 1823, but it was a temporary lease while their own wharf was being built. Following more than two decades as a factor—but never owning any property—Robert Scott had finally ascended to the next level as a wharf owner.   The 1823 tax digest recorded Warren Ward Wharf (or East of Lincoln Wharf) Lot 2 and buildings assessed at $15,000.

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Meanwhile, Andrew Low & Company was a dry goods, mercantile and import company that existed in Savannah for more than 70 years.  Curiously, the earliest reference to “Andrew Low & Co.” existing today is not one of his own advertisements, but rather an indirect reference found within a different factor’s advertisement in April of 1799. 

John Grieve and James Anderson announced their mercantile partnership, mentioning the site of their store “adjoining messrs. Andrew Low.”  Oddly, the company belonging to Andrew Low seems to have existed at least three years before it advertised to the public in Savannah newspapers.  Below marked the first advertisement of Andrew Low & Co., in May of 1802:

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In 1810 Low established his company’s showroom at the southwest corner of Bull and Duke (now Congress), overlooking Johnson Square.  The building burned in the Fire of 1820, but he rebuilt at this location, a brick structure he and his nephew would retain as their retail site for decades.  On December 15, 1823 he began advertising his new “convenient wharf with Fire-proof Stores” on the River.  The tax digest of 1824 listed Andrew Low’s properties on Johnson Square and his new Wharf Lot 1, each valued at $12,000.  Andrew Low now owned the property on Lot 1 East of Lincoln while Scott & Balfour owned the adjoining Lot 2.

In 1828 Low’s partner Robert Isaacs died; Low and James Taylor formed a partnership which lasted until 1834.  In 1829 Low’s nephew and namesake came to America to work with his uncle; in 1839 the senior Andrew retired, leaving the 27 year-old to take charge of the business.  The company already 40 years old as the younger Low took the reins, the Low empire continued to grow, becoming one of the most profitable and iconic commercial enterprises in 19th century Savannah.

In the 1843 tax digest the Scott & Balfour Wharf was still valued at $15,000, the Andrew Low Wharf at $10,000.  A rare success in factorage partnerships, the Scott & Balfour association endured for two decades, until John Balfour’s death in 1844.  Robert Scott himself died the following year, in 1845.  His widow and son advertised the wharf and stores for rent in 1846.  Andrew Low seems to have exchanged wharves sometime thereafter; the tax digests of the 1850s switch from his previous association of Lot 1 to Lot 2.

In the following decade, as the massive ranges of John Stoddard and George Jones sprang up on the riverfront an additional level was added to the two buildings of this range; in 1851 Andrew Low’s Wharf Lot was assessed at $15,000, but by the 1853 tax digest it had risen to $30,000 and by 1858 $34,000, so it seems clear that the third level was in place by 1858. 

The result of these 1850s improvements is that today the Wharf Lot 2 property stands about three feet taller than the western half at Lot 1.  Both structures of the range today are stuccoed over; only occasional gaps or breaks in the stucco expose the brick and stone melange beneath the lower two levels.

The elder Andrew Low had overseen his company for 40 years, the younger Andrew Low continued the company for an additional 33 years before opting to retire at age 60.  On August 31, 1872 Andrew Low & Co., an entity that the Morning News labeled as “identified with the history of Savannah for thee-quarters of a century,” came to an end.

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208 – 230 East Bay Street, “Stoddard’s Lower Range” (Wharf Lots 1 & 2)

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1809 –  Eastern half (Wharf Lot 1) built for Samuel and Charles Howard, who promptly went broke (Lower three levels still extant)

1811 –  Western half (Wharf Lot 2) built for Simon Fraser (Lower three levels still extant)

1858/59 –  Superstructure consolidated both properties and added upper two levels

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Eastern half of the property (230-220 East Bay): Alexander Watt’s Wharf, as early as 1794. Though no stone existing on the wharf today was in place to witness the event, in 1798 this Wharf Lot 1 marked the point of arrival for the ship Elizabeth, in the words of Watt, “the remarkably fast sailing copper-bottomed British Ship,” captained by Thomas Hall.   Before its return to Liverpool the Elizabeth offloaded a cargo of some 330 African individuals in one of the last legal importations of Savannah’s Atlantic trade, a sale handled and promoted by Alexander Watt. From September of 1798 to May of 1799 his above newspaper advertisement was re-printed between two and three times a month, appearing in the Georgia Gazette a total of 18 times over an eight-month span as the human cargo of the Elizabeth was gradually whittled away and sold off until none remained.

In an 1800 advertisement offering a lease on the property Alexander Watt claimed there were two buildings present on this Wharf Lot 1, “one store 76 feet long, 30 feet wide, three stories high, and piazzas; likewise another store 74 feet long, 20 feet wide, and two stories high, both of which will be in complete order soon.”   The structures were presumably frame, or perhaps some mix of materials today likely long erased by time. 

Samuel Howard began his career as a factor 1801, answering Watt’s 1800 advertisement to lease part of the property, and from his earliest days Howard advertised his location on Watt’s Wharf, “near the coffeehouse.”  Following Watt’s death in 1801 he appears to have bought the wharf lot; by 1803 it was identified in the newspapers as “Howard’s Wharf.”  Six years later he seems to have replaced Watt’s old counting houses, for by March of 1809 Samuel Howard was advertising space for lease in his “Fire Proof Store” on the site.   The tax digests reveal that in the year 1808 this Wharf Lot 1 with buildings was valued at $15,000; the 1810 tax digest valued the property at $27,000, suggesting that this fireproof building was indeed built in 1809. 

But having been on the site for a decade—and having built new fire-proof stores while operating a small schooner fleet—he and his brother had bitten off more than they could chew.  By June of 1810 legal notices were appearing in the Republican; there was a lien levied on this wharf property of Samuel Howard.  He had overextended himself.

By 1812 the wharf property had inched up to $27,300.  Over the next few years various downtown properties owned by Howard were seized and sold off to satisfy the accruing back-taxes and legal complications, but it was a losing battle.  By September of 1816, when former lawyer-turned-merchant Joseph Pelot began advertising produce within the complex it was still “Howard’s Wharf”… but in name only.

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By 1815 Samuel Howard had graduated from schooners and cargo transports to steam boats and passenger transportation. “Messrs. Samuel and Charles Howard are now building a steam-boat, for the purpose of towing vessels to or from Tybee, or boats from hence to Augusta and from that place hither,” the November 15, 1815 Savannah Republican reported.  In June of 1816 a Charleston newspaper remarked:   “We were gratified yesterday by the arrival of the steam-boat Enterprise, captain Howard from Savannah.”  Though evidently the physical appearance was less than desired, as the newspaper noted:  “Her external ornaments not being completed, she has, as yet, a rude appearance to the eye, but we understand, in a few days, will be fitted up with every accommodation.” (Quoted in the June 27, 1816 Savannah Republican)

The Enterprise had the misfortune to be struck by lightning on September 15, 1816 off of Sullivan’s Island, resulting in a boiler explosion that killed three and injured at least seven others.  The vessel was soon repaired, however, and the Howard fleet grew to include the Charleston and even the Samuel Howard; the vessels made regularly runs between Augusta, Milledgeville, Savannah, Charleston and Darien.  The Enterprise faded from the newspapers after 1827, the Samuel Howard at the end of 1829, but the Charleston seems to have still been running by the time Howard died in 1832.

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Western half of the property (214 – 208 East Bay):  Similar to the Howard Stores, the Harden Stores of Wharf 2 also came on the block to satisfy unpaid back taxes; the difference being that Major Edward Harden had been dead since 1804, and the City was seeking to “satisfy the taxes of the estate of Edward Harden for the years 1808, 1809, 1810.”   Historically, this property was known around town as “Coffee House Wharf,” because of the prior legacy of the Merchants and Planters Coffee House on the site during the 1790s; it seems to have been the site that hosted a large fete for George Washington during his last night in Savannah on May 14, 1791, an event attended by some 200 people and capped off with an impressive display of fireworks. Indeed, George Washington was here—whether below or overlooking this Wharf Lot 2—in the faintly-etched record of 1791.

Found frequently advertised between 1796 and 1798, the old Coffee House was a commercial building large enough to house meetings, social functions and businesses, and in those brief years before the City Exchange was built, it seems to have served as the center of commercial activity on the Bay.  Descriptions of the building are sparse, only occasional references come down to us through newspaper advertisements in its waning days.  From January of 1798:

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It was a spacious property, but years past its prime by the time 45 year-old Edward Harden had come into possession of this western lot of the recently-passed Alexander Watt in 1803.  Hereafter, for much of the next decade Wharf 2 was known interchangeably as “Harden’s Wharf” and “the old Coffee House Wharf,” despite the fact that Harden spent most of the decade dead and by this point the coffee house was long gone.  The lot was assessed at an unspectacular $15,000 in the tax digest of 1809 and $16,000 in 1810, and this Harden Wharf does not appear to have possessed any elements that remain today. 

At some point between 1810 and 1811 Major Simon Fraser bought or leased this Wharf Lot 2, wasting no time in constructing elements which likely do come down to us today.  The tax digest of 1812 saw the value of the property skyrocket from $16,000 to $27,000.  Fraser died in October, 1812; his tenure over the property may have been brief but it was also incredibly productive.  The Savannah Republican mourned his passing:  “Another revolutionary character is gone, never to return.”  A native of Scotland, Fraser “came over to America at the commencement of the revolutionary war.  Without hesitation, and with great pleasure he joined in the common defense of the country in which he intended to spend his days, and freely participated in all the difficulties and dangers of a seven years war, which in a great measure shortened his days.”

The Continental officer’s passing at age 54 left the estate to his widow Margaret; her wharf lot remained valued at $27,000 in 1816, rose to $30,000 by the 1817.  But by this point she too was facing back-taxes; by late 1816 former attorney-turned-factor Joseph Pelot mentioned above was managing real estate in both of these troubled Fraser and Howard properties.

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The 1819 and 1821 tax digests found Wharf Lot 2 valued at $35,000, now the property of John and Simon Fraser, but by 1821 John was dead and Simon ended the decade-long Fraser family management of the lot.  The 1824 tax digest would find John David Mongin owning both wharf lots, valued at a combined $45,000.

Nearly five decades after the construction of the initial structures, in 1858 and 1859, John Stoddard remodeled and expanded these old Howard and Fraser properties of Mongin, joining them together into what we call today Stoddard’s Lower Range.  Standing on the Factors’ Walk side of the building today there is no mistaking where the 1809 portions end and 1859 addition begins; its stone foundation giving way to a red brick facade, encapsulating the meeting of two disparate time periods. At one particularly visible suture the rather crudely erected “fire proof stores” of the 1810s meets the elegance and urbanity of the 1850s commercial riverfront.

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Inheriting by marriage both of the Mongin wharves, John Stoddard became another Savannah merchant to own two range properties on the riverfront; to distinguish them this one on Wharf Lots 1 and 2 became known as Stoddard’s Lower Range; two blocks to the west on Wharf Lots 7 & 8 is Stoddard’s Upper Range.

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202 – 206 East Bay Street, “Archibald Smith Stores” (Wharf Lot 3)

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Between 1810 and 1816 – Built for Archibald Smith

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Archibald Smith (c.1758-1830) was the son of John and Elizabeth Smith of Beaufort; his sister Sarah married into Georgia royalty (or rather, Loyalty) as she wed the son and namesake of Georgia’s Royal Governor James Wright in 1781.  Archibald married Helena (Nelly) Zubly in October, 1796; she was the granddaughter of John Joachim Zubly, minister of Savannah’s First Presbyterian Church (and another notable Georgia Loyalist).  Smith’s longtime primary residence was at the northeast corner of Abercorn Street and Bryan, a property occasionally threatened with sale for back taxes, while his mother Elizabeth owned the mirror properties across the lane facing Bay Street.  He died on May 3, 1830; though the Reynolds Ward property is long lost to history today his house at 48 East Broad, willed to oldest son Archibald, still stands.  His factorage building is the oldest in-tact structure on East River Street; the bulk of the structure likely dates to 1810.  His Wharf Lot 3 more than doubled in value between the tax assessments of 1809 and 1811.

Seemingly unmolested by the extensive alterations of the 1850s that reshaped the ranges to the left and to the right of it, the Smith Stores stands like a time capsule hidden between the superstructures of the 1850s.  It appears to mostly retain its original profile, and its only obvious alteration since the 1884 Sanborn illustration is the loss of two of its three upper trestle bridges.

Archibald Smith had owned his wharf since at least 1796; in December of 1810, Hugh Ross became the first advertised tenant in Smith’s new “Fire Proof Stores.”

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This building, essentially concurrent with the buildings of Commerce Row, was probably the first east of the Exchange to rise above the bluff.  In the spring of 1812 grocers Haven & Bilbo moved out of their previous location at Hunter’s Wharf, a block to the west, and into Archibald Smith’s new building:

By the tax digest of 1817 the Smith Wharf topped out in value at $40,000, suggesting further improvements or expansion on the lot by 1816.  Whether the improvements were east or west (or up…), it is likely the range assumed its current dimensions, more or less, by 1816.  The value settled back to $35,000 1818-1820, then $30,000 in the 1821 tax digest.

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 On August 3, 1823 there was a fire on the wharf.  The blaze was suspected of being arson; a $500 reward was offered, but it seems no one was implicated.  Whether or not the fire impacted this building, however, is unclear.  What is clear, though, is that the property assessment of the wharf actually remained unchanged at $25,000 from the 1824 tax digest through the 1827 (covering the period of 1823-1826), and by January, 1824 a grocer by the name of William Russell was advertising his store in the upper floor… so if indeed there was any damage suffered by the building itself, it was addressed rather quickly.

In terms of Factors’ Walk, this Wharf Lot 3 and the Archibald Smith Building became the location at which Factors’ Walk splits from one level into upper and lower levels.

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112 – 130 East Bay Street, “Jones/Derenne Range” or “Jones’ Lower Range” (Wharf Lots 4 & 5)

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Between 1810 and 1819 –  Eastern half (Wharf Lot 4) built for George Jones (Portions still extant)

Between 1813 and 1825 –  Western half (Wharf Lot 5) built for Margaret Hunter (Portions still extant)

1857/58 –  Superstructure built over both properties for George Wymberly Jones

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Eastern half of the property (130 – 122 East Bay Street):  This wharf of George Jones remained relatively constant in the tax digests between 1809 and 1817.   The Mossman Houstoun Map, dated to 1812, depicts a large fire-proof structure on the Jones Wharf Lot (Lot 4), whether brick or stone in unclear, but it was this structure contributing to the lot’s valuation, which hovered at or around $26,000 until 1816.

The valuation exploded in the period between 1818 and 1820, suggesting a second wave of significant construction occurred on the wharf between 1817 and 1819.

• 1809 tax digest – $26,000
• 1810 – $27,000
• 1811 – $27,000
• 1812 – $27,000
• 1814 – $23,625
• 1815 – $27,000
• 1816 – $27,000
• 1817 – $28,000
• 1819 – $35,000
• 1820 – $45,000

Jones’ Lower Wharf first appears in advertisements in 1798.  Elements of the current building standing could date as early as 1808-09; there is an August 24, 1809 Republican advertisement promoting a large cache of bricks.   “For sale: 15,000 Philadelphia Bricks on George Jones’s Wharf,” read the announcement, a large import that very likely provided the materials for construction of the Jones’ building, a conclusion not difficult to reach given that some portion of the building was up and operational by the spring of 1810, and identified thereafter as “Jones’s brick buildings.”  The first reference to the new building on the site appears in March of 1810, where Meliss & Taylor announced that they had “taken Fire Proof Stores on Jones’s Wharf, where they will be happy to attend to the commands of their friends.”  A “yellow painted building” predated the 1810 fire proof structure; the “yellow store” continued to be advertised even after the 1810 structure was built, so it did not replace it.  An advertisement in the July 31, 1810 Savannah Evening Ledger casually noted of John Morel’s Commerce Row Wharf 7:  “There are several detached stores on the wharf, which will be set let separately.”  This would have been similarly representative of the Jones Wharf; long before River Street, structures on the early 19th century wharves were scattered in a haphazard manner that would likely surprise modern eyes.  In 1807 French aristocrat-turned Haitian émigré-turned Savannah merchant Petit de Villers had taken an office in the yellow store before moving out the following year.  His name is found among those in the 1809 tax digest entries described as a “factor.” 

In October of 1810 he returned to the Jones Wharf, this time upgrading to “Jones’s Brick Store,” where he remained for another two years; he was still advertising from “Jones’ brick stores” as late as May, 1812.  Two years later, in February, 1814 Jones himself advertised commercial space available for rent in his “Fire-Proof Stores.”

The fire proof structures erected or improved in this period between 1810 and 1819 topped out at two stories at their north façade, one story at Factors’ Walk; elements of the southern and western foundations (Factors’ Walk façade & River Street Inn atrium) would seem to still exist and were incorporated into the larger 1857 range built in the next generation for George Jones’ son.

Interestingly, the north façade of today—facing River Street—is entirely 1857/58, with no trace of the earlier building.  All these years I had just assumed this was because the 1810-1819 construction did not extend outward to the length of the current structure.  In other words, I presumed its footprint had been smaller….  Instead, just the opposite appears to have been true.   Examine below.

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Perusing the 1853 Vincent Map, the 1810-1819 Jones Stores appear to have been longhouses, extending far beyond the boundary of today’s River Street.  In predating River Street, the stores became one of the later impediments to the development of the street.  In the era of the 1810s, when these structures were built, there was no River Street and no conception that someday any public street would be thrown across the private wharf lots; again, buildings were thrown down in pretty much any manner that suited practicality of the moment.  The 1857/58 Jones superstructure that replaced the longhouses reduced their footprint to the line of the street.  Similarly, the Mossman Houstoun Map of 1812 depicts a longhouse structure on Reynolds Wharf 2; gone by the 1853 Vincent, it nonetheless demonstrates that the riverfront had a life long before a River Street imposed the conformity we see today.

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Western half of the property (120 – 112 East Bay Street):   Wharf Lot 5 of Reynolds Ward; in 1797 this had become the wharf of William Hunter, five years later Hunter was killed by the former mayor of Savannah in a duel which took place on the outskirts of town in August of 1802. 

The details of this duel (“My wife!  My children!”) may be found here.    In the wake of his death his wharf lot fell to his widow Margaret.

In the first of the tax digests, in 1809, Margaret Hunter’s Wharf Lot 5 was assessed at $19,000; it retained this valuation, more or less, through the 1810s, modestly bumping up to $25,000 by 1824 through 1826.   The structure or structures on this wharf likely exemplified the same building profile as the Jones stores (though probably no longhouse); which is to say a single story at the Factors’ Walk side and two levels on the wharf or river side.  Today the entire length of Lower Factors’ Walk over the course of the Jones superstructure is a patchwork of older walls and stonework likely dating from these earlier structures.

Though it made no obvious mark in the tax digests, one Hunter property seems to have been completed in 1813, as an October, 1813 advertisement shows a tenant within the wharf’s “new fire proof stores.”

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The tenant in question was Benjamin Norris; in March of 1814, Norris advertised “Prime Green Coffee and Cognac and Brandy” from “Hunter’s new stores.”   As late as June that coffee and cognac was still being advertised; but by late July T.U.P. Charlton had posted in the newspaper “a meeting of the creditors of Mr. Benjamin  B. Norris… at my house on Saturday next.”   Concurrently—and probably not coincidentally—Norris seems to have been forced to auction off much of the furnishings in his house.   He never again advertised from Hunter’s Wharf.   Such was the rise and fall of a typical factor.   Even Margaret Hunter was faced with the potential threat of forced sale in 1815 to answer for 1810 taxes.

But where one factor left off another always appeared to take his place.   By October of 1816 Henry Hills sub-letted a portion of his situation:

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Hills excitedly offered “Cognac Brandy and Holland Gin, pure and of superior quality, being ten years old; door Malls. Colminar Wine and Chocolate; all of which will be sold low and on long credit, from the wharf.” (October 24, 1816)  Concurrently in October of 1816, other factorages within the Hunter’s Wharf properties offered shoes, boots and hats (Charles Harmon & Co.); 4000 bushels of Liverpool Salt and 1000 bushels of corn (Whitney & Parkman); one ton of nails, two dozen saddles & bridles and a “quantity of thimbles” (J. Woodward); pickled codfish or 100 barrels Menhaden fish (James Bulloch); candles, sugar and soap (John Lathrop & Co.); looking glasses and walking canes (Kettell & Sewall)… while Isaac Course & Son was without inventory, a factorage just setting up in October of 1816 and advertising “in the new brick tenement, Hunter’s wharf.”   Course was looking to enlist “a person to act as MATE of a vessel,” perhaps to start the inventory ball rolling.   The relationships between ships and factors was nothing if not transactional.

This was also the range where Robert Scott partnered with Alex Mein for the three years between 1819 and 1822 as he worked his way to achieve his own wharf ownership.

From general factorage to alcohol to grocery store and dry goods, each wharf essentially contained its own stripmall of vendors; the line of factors begins to appear endless to any modern researcher.

Margaret Hunter died in or about 1834.   In 1849, Wharf Lot 5—a holding of the Hunter family for more than 50 years—was purchased by George Wymberly Jones (later G.W.J. Derenne) as he prepared to expand his father’s old holdings, resulting ultimately in the 1857 superstructure pictured below.  Stone wall remnants run the entire length of the old Wharf 5 on Factors’ Walk, suggesting that much of the Hunter Stores built between 1813 and 1825 still exists and was simply folded into this later Jones superstructure.

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The August 5, 1858 Morning News advertised retail or office space—still in the 1850s termed tenements—within the new superstructure, supposed to be completed by or around “1st of November,” 1858.

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102 – 110 East Bay Street, “Claghorn & Cunningham Range” (Wharf Lot 6)

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1857/58 –  Built for Claghorn & Cunningham

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Wharf Lot 6 East of Bull:  It wasn’t always Wet Willies….  In the 1810 tax digest this was the wharf of Nicholas Anciaux and valued at $21,500.  He was dead by 1812, but the lot continued to be known as Anciaux’s Wharf for decades thereafter.  For a time between the 1820s and 1830s the lot was owned jointly by Ann Booth and Amos Scudder; the 1853 Vincent Map depicted most of this half-block as vacant.  James Claghorn first appeared in Savannah’s commercial record in 1820 as one half of Claghorn & Bassett. Advertising from “No. 23, Bolton’s Range,” on the Commerce Row block, Claghorn & Bassett sold groceries, cider, jars and jugs, sugar, codfish, barley and tobacco until the partners’ dissolution in June of 1823.

By January of 1825, Claghorn had joined another partnership. Bradley, Claghorn & Wood proudly advertised the imports of “Prime Pork and Sperm Oil” from Anciaux’s Wharf, inaugurating Claghorn’s career-long association with Wharf 6.  The partnership proved to be fruitful and long-lasting; on July 1, 1847 John Cunningham was added to the partnership between Orlando Wood and James Claghorn.  Despite the company’s long association with the wharf, the company does not appear to have taken ownership of the Wharf Lot 6 before 1855, appearing in the tax digest of 1856 valued at $20,000.

In 1857 Claghorn & Cunningham began their superstructure, demolishing prior structures on the lot, resulting in a brief drop in wharf valuation, decreasing from $20,000 in the 1857 tax digest to $18,000 in the 1858, before seeing gradual increases in the 1859 to $24,000 and $29,000 in the 1860, peaking at $32,000 by the 1861.  The construction was concurrent with the erection of the Jones superstructure next door to the east.  In short, today’s entire block between Abercorn and Drayton was a product of 1857-1860—from its buildings to its retaining walls.  From the Savannah Morning News, on September 4, 1857:

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The Claghorn and Cunningham Range of 1857-60 arose out of the same frenzied epoch which saw other superstructures on River Street take shape; as we’ve seen already and will see again, the 1850s was a very busy decade.  Unlike other examples from the 1850s, like Stoddard’s Lower Range and the Jones Range, this Claghorn & Cunningham Range was an entirely new construction not utilizing any prior construction remnants.  The company owned a second wharf property at Wharf Lot 3 of Yamacraw.

In 1877 Claghorn & Cunningham dissolved.   As the October 16, 1877 Savannah Morning News remarked of the company’s legacy:  “We may refer briefly to the dissolution of the old and popular firm of Claghorn & Cunningham, of which many of our readers throughout Georgia and Florida will hear with regret.  They have for more than a quarter of a century stood foremost among the leading merchants and business men of our city.   Men of liberal enterprise and public spirit, they have been identified with all the important enterprises connected with the growth and prosperity of Savannah.  To them more than any other of our citizens we were indebted in past years for the maintenance of steam connection with the ports of Florida, between which and our city they were chiefly instrumental in establishing an important trade.”

So respected was the legacy and savvy of the company that 20 years later, near the dawn of the 20th century, the newspaper celebrated one of the founders as he returned to visit the town at the age of 81.

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100 East Bay Street, “Cotton Exchange”

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Begun June 1886, completed September 1887

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All things considered, a late addition to River Street’s distinctive profile, the Cotton Exchange was opened in 1887.

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As the September 17, 1887 Savannah Tribune remarked:   “It is one of the handsomest [buildings] in the city and cost $45,000.”   The Morning News explained the structure’s unique design:   “The building is built in the centre of a slip leading to the river, and is raised thirty-five feet or so from the ground by iron pillars, so as to give free access to River street.”

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The May 28, 1886 Morning News printed a list of subcontractors for the building.

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The construction had not been without its complications, as just months before the building’s completion Preston brought complaints against Chaplin for veering from his specifications.

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12 – 42 East Bay Street, “Stoddard’s Upper Range” (Wharf Lots 7 & 8)

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1858/59 –  Built for John Stoddard

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John Stoddard was born in Massachusetts on March 11, 1089.  He married Mary Mongin, the orphaned granddaughter of John David Mongin in 1836, three years after the latter’s death, and in so doing came into possession of all of the Mongin wharf properties in Savannah.

At the time of his death in 1833 Mongin’s wharf holdings of lots 1, 2, 7 and 8 were valued in the tax digest at a combined total of $83,000.  Some two decades later lots 7 & 8 were still depicted as the “Mongin Wharf” in the 1853 Vincent Map, and advertised as such as late as April of 1854; but it was with Stoddard’s subsequent rebuilding of the properties over the next five years that he indelibly placed his stamp upon the riverfront.  Ambitiously, Stoddard built his Upper Range concurrently with his Lower Range; Wharf Lots 1,2, 7 and 8 all went up all at once.  The December 8, 1859 Savannah Morning News made comment on the finished structure.  “The new Stoddard Range, opposite our office, is now completed and occupied, and we think, the handsomest block in the Bay.  The bridge, now in process of erection, from this block to the bluff near the exchange, will be found a very great convenience.”

The western portion of the superstructure (12 – 26 East Bay) saw damage in the September 1876 Kelly’s Store Fire (more on that below) and was immediately rebuilt.

Here’s a vintage view of Stoddard’s Range, circa 1940.

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2 – 10 East Bay Street, “Kelly’s Store Range” (Wharf Lot 9)

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1877 –  Built for Eugene Kelly

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Historically known as Moore’s Wharf.  Ann Bolton Moore Booth (1772-1855) owned half of Wharf 9 for decades, first appearing in the tax digest of 1809 valued at a modest $12,500; she also later, for a time, owned half of Wharf 6.  The sister of John Bolton, she assumed the property following first husband John Mauve Moore’s demise in 1797 and joined the ranks of Margaret Fraser and Margaret Hunter in representing the female wharf holders of the first half of the 19th century… as well as the contingent of the Bolton family owning wharf properties.  By the 1840s Lot 9 was jointly owned by Booth and her brother Curtis Bolton, but nothing of the Bolton era today survives on the lot.

What should be understood about today the building at Wharf Lot 9 today is that it was the product of a friendly carpetbagger, and actually the second version of the Kelly Building on the site.  In the era of Reconstruction a visitor from New York might have seemed an unlikely figure to be welcomed in Savannah, but as the Morning News noted on November 25, 1870, “the recent appearance of Mr. Eugene Kelly… has given much pleasure to many of his personal friends, and awakened a lively satisfaction in a larger number of persons, who, though without personal acquaintance, are his sincere well-wishers.”  The item concluded:  “New York has no leading man who has shown (since the war) a more truly friendly interest in Savannah than Mr. Kelly.”  The original build of the Kelly’s Stores quad was begun in July of 1869 and completed early in 1870 (just in time to be depicted in the 1871 view).

Impressive though the structure had been, it did not last long.  The Morning News of August 26, 1876 printed a real-time remark from a correspondent the day before:  “At this writing, a very large fire is under way, and one of our largest commercial blocks is destined to be devoured.”  On August 25, 1876, only six years after its completion, the structure was laid waste.  According to the newspaper, the fire started “in a large shed on Kelly’s wharf…  In this shed were stored about twenty-five bales of hay, a large lot of petroleum and a quantity of turpentine or rosin.  This inflammable material was speedily licked up by the flames,” and carried across the street into the building, while also damaging some of Stoddard’s range and a ship docked near the Abercorn Ramp.  In December, Savannah’s favorite New York benefactor set the wheels in motion for the structure’s replacement.  “I have met Mr. Eugene Kelly, of New York, whose handsome building in your city was destroyed by fire some months ago,” an Atlanta correspondent reported in the December 6, 1876 Morning News.  “He will leave for Savannah in a few days, and contract for the rebuilding of his burnt block.”  This rebuild—call it “Kelly’s Stores 2” that we see today—was overseen by Kelly, whose visits to the Screven House hotel were recorded regularly by the newspaper, the replacement completed by the end of 1877.

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City Exchange/City Hall

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City Exchange: 1799-1802 – Adrian Boucher, architect (demolished)

City Hall: 1904/05 – Hyman Witcover, architect

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Today’s City Hall stands atop the site of the previous City Exchange, built between 1799-1802, designed by French architect Adrian Boucher.  Architecturally sparse in its earliest days, the building would see its distinctive clock steeple and bell tower added between 1803 and 1804.  Already regarded as antiquated and ugly by the 1850s it only narrowly avoiding demolition in 1854.  After a period of debate the City Exchange was instead treated to an overhaul and extensive renovation, resulting in the addition of what would become one of its most iconic features in its front-facing iron double-portico.

As a letter quoted within the July 8, 1854 Morning News remarked of the aging structure:  “That unsymmetrical old pile is now undergoing what is called a ‘rejuvenating’ process, in a series of repairs and adornments.  Some of the latter are pleasing by themselves, viz: cornices, and a cast-iron portico on the city-front.  It was suggested that the building be entirely razed, and replaced by one of an improved style.  But a majority decided to preserve the present fabric, in the same feeling probably recently expressed by a native Savannah lady, on board a steamer passing by the Exchange, who exclaimed, in reply to some unadmiring remarks made on the structure:  ‘Oh!  Let it stand.  Don’t pull it down.  I know it is ugly; but then it is so old, and I love old things.  Spare it for its history.’”

As we have already seen, the 1850s saw such a revitalization and urbanization of the waterfront it is somewhat incredible to consider that the Exchange came away with only a modest remodeling.  As the correspondent within the Morning News concluded:  “They may dress it up in youthful fashion, and give it a smart cap, and false curls, and they may put on that silk apron with its pinked frills; they cannot make it handsome.”  

On the latter point perhaps one might be allowed to agree to disagree; indeed, the structure took on the appearance we recognize today due only to these mid-1850s improvements.  The spartan brick building once visited by Lafayette was completely stuccoed over and painted brown, with molded cornices and fronted with a wide, two-storied portico.  In the 1890s the building saw its final renovation; it was whitewashed, adopting the bright coloration seen in so many of its surviving imaged of its last decade; but having already escaped the executioner once, by the turn of the 20th century its size and antiquity had at last sealed its fate.  It was a relic of another era that had been designed to serve a much smaller town.  Its ancient town of 5000 was now well over 50,000 and growing.  The City Exchange was abandoned and its clock stopped on March 23, 1904.  Replaced the following year by the current 1905 City Hall by Hyman Witcover.  And sure, the current City Hall is an elegant structure, but the City Exchange was just adorable… and if this entirely too-small building still existed today, it would stand out as one of the oldest public buildings still existing in the South.

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The old Exchange clocks and bell hung for a number of years in the steeple of John Rourke’s Iron Works on the east end of River Street, until that too, was brought down by the hurricane of 1940.

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2 – 36 West Bay Street, the lost block of “Commerce Row” and “Commercial Row” (Wharf Lots 7, 8 & 9 West of Bull)

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Commerce Row (demolished 1888/1889)

Commercial Row (demolished 1969)

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No sooner had the Cotton Exchange completed the 19^th century profile of the riverfront in 1887 when another of its crowned jewels began to come down.  Two of the riverfront’s most iconic landmarks overlapped by less than two years.

Throughout the 19^th century this block of Wharf Lots 7, 8 and 9 West of Bull Street was the beating heart of Savannah’s commercial riverfront.  It is worth reposting that 1884 Sanborn Map image that we saw earlier, just to illustrate all that was there and subsequently lost.

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Interestingly, even these ancient counting houses and offices of Commerce Row/Bolton Range were preceded by prior iterations.  As Robert Mackay wrote to his wife in April of 1810:  “The improvements going on are very great, Bolton is beautifying the Bay with ranges of most elegant & extensive warehouses—[the prior] Commerce row is pulled down & a superb edifice with a Steeple as high almost as the Exchange has suddenly been rear’d in its place.”

Robert Bolton (1757-1802) was the owner and developer of Wharf Lots 7, 8 & 9 West of Bull; in the years following his death the tax digest of 1809 found his Commerce Row Wharf to be the largest and most highly valued wharf on Savannah’s riverfront, valued at a $122,500.  With the improvements on Commerce Row concluded, in 1811 the properties were valued at a whopping $200,000.

Here was the completed steeple to which Mackay was alluding:

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The holdings of the Bolton family were enormous; in glancing at the tax digests one may be forgiven for imagining they owned half the town, as their assets often consumed half a page within the tax digests.  Devastated in the depression of the 1820s, the Bolton holdings would fracture and fall like dominoes, but in the era prior to 1820 the Bolton family was the royalty of Savannah merchants and factors community.  Possessing a commercial shipping line, the most desirous commercial space in town and an unrivaled bevy of real estate, the Boltons were the Lannisters of this King’s Landing.

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But not unlike Game of Thrones, there were darker machinations to be found within the family dynamic..  The company named R & J Bolton represented Robert Bolton Bolton III (1788-1857) and his distant relation/financial guardian John (1774-1838).  Following his untimely death of patriarch Robert in 1802 at the age of 45—and his widow’s subsequent passing in 1806—Robert’s cousin John stepped forward as executor… as it was later learned, against the wishes of Robert or his widow.  The wealth and commercial interests of the Bolton estate fell largely to eldest son Robert Bolton III, but with John pulling the strings.  A later 1875 indictment claimed shenanigans, accusing John and his siblings of conspiring to defraud the elder Robert’s children; the indictment finding John, Curtis and Ann Booth “being in poor circumstances, and possessed of little or no estate at the time of the death of said testator [Robert II], wickedly contriving and conspiring together… to cheat and defraud” the younger Robert and his five siblings.  It seems unlikely that the financial ruin of the Bolton family in the 1820s could have been prevented, but according to indictments in the 1870s it may have been hastened by faithless actors within their own family.

Commerce Row first appeared in the advertisements of the Columbia Museum & Savannah Advertiser in September of 1796; the 1809-1810 complex seems to have been the second iteration.  Serving as the western anchor of the Bolton Range, the distinctive Commerce Row cupola—already heralded above by Mackay—would become the icon of Savannah’s commercial industry in the 19th century.  The eastern block of the Bolton Range (right), was a beautiful mélange of brick and stone; to what degree either building might have reused foundations from the prior 18^th century Commerce Row is unclear.

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Alas, this center of 19th century industry, this block of commercial enterprise, these structures which formed the heart of Savannah’s riverfront are gone today.  Don’t blame the Hyatt… its absence today is no fault of the 1981 Hyatt.  The days of Commerce Row were numbered; not only would it not make it to the 1980s, it would not see the 1890s.  Even the 1888 Sanborn Map had the western half of the block—ending with “Ruins” in the 1884 image posted above—already demolished for a grocery store, “being built.”

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The Ferst Building, completed in September of 1888 on the western half of the block, presaged the demolition of the eastern half of the block by only a year; as the May 15, 1888 Savannah Morning News suggested:  “This building will be followed very soon, it is expected, by similar improvements extending to Bull street, thus restoring that entire block to its original pre-eminence as one of the chief business blocks in the city.”  As predicted, by the summer of 1889 a $70,000 replacement for the old Bolton Range was announced.

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By the 1880s the structures once belonging to Bolton and Habersham had become antiquated and small; Commerce Row, with its unique turn of the 19^th century treasures, was dismantled to make way for what would become known as Commercial Row.  With six stories, “same style as the Ferst building” and conveniences such as “elevators driven by gas engines,” the 1890 Wilcox Building of Commercial Row was… big.

A noteworthy aspect was that this new complex extended over River Street (as seen in the Sanborn below), which resulted in the air rights of today’s Hyatt to similarly cross over River Street.

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Another noteworthy aspect of the transition from Commerce Row to Commercial Row was that this became the first and only block of the riverfront to lose its Factors’ Walk.  While the question of whether “the Strand” was public domain had been debated as early as 1787, since the era of the Cluskey Vaults the city’s ownership of Factors’ Walk had gone virtually unquestioned.  In 1884 Wilcox & Gibbs Guano Company—the owners of Commerce Row in the 1880s—openly challenged that assumption, closing off the property for its own use.  When the city marshal was charged to reopen the block Wilcox & Gibbs countered with a temporary injunction.  By 1887, with the debate over whether their alley was public property or private still unresolved, City Council was persuaded to accept a compromise by selling away any claims of ownership.  It was a decision which the June 3, 1887 Morning News remarked caustically, “is a surprise to nine tenths of the people of this city,” and ignited a new round of legal challenges.  “The compromise has awakened a good deal of opposition,” the newspaper reported three months later, on September 2, 1887, “and a number of the Bay street property owners have sent a memorial to the Legislature asking that the compromise should not be confirmed.” In April of 1888 the formal sale was finalized, in a decision which split even City Council and resulted in a rare majority/minority split public opinion. Wilcox & Gibbs wasted little time, and with their new buildings of 1888-1890 the block of Factors’ Walk was demolished. These replacement riverfront properties would abut the bluff without any sub-level.

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The subject of this lost block returns us to the building seen at the top of the post.  It was one of the rear buildings of the Commerce Row/Commercial Row complex; a structure which survived the transition from the early 19^th century Commerce Row to its late 19^th century successor.

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The 1884 Sanborn Map identified this structure as a “Grinding mill,” belonging then to Wilcox & Gibbs; in the 1898 Sanborn it was identified simply as “Storage.”  Demolished sometime between 1950 and 1969, it stood at the north-west flank of the Hyatt today.  As seen above and below, if it remained today it would block much of the street.

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The 1890 Commercial Row and all adjoining buildings were demolished in 1969.  Formerly the most congested block of River Street, the entire block west of City Hall lay vacant for more than a decade; the 1970s riverfront had a sizable cavity that was not filled until the Hyatt was built in 1981.

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112 – 130 West Bay Street, “Jones/Telfair Range” or “Jones’ Upper Range”(Wharf Lots 4 & 5 West of Bull)

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Between 1852 and 1854 –  Built for George W. Jones and Telfair/Hodgson families

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The first of the 1850s superstructures.

Wharf Lots 4, 5 and 6 West of Bull Street were split down the middle between the Jones and Telfair families.  Noble Wimberly Jones died in 1805, Edward Telfair in 1807; the tax digests recorded their properties as “estate of” these respective patriarchs in the years that followed.  In 1809 the Jones Wharf of 4 and western half of 5 was appraised at $25,000, the Telfair Wharf of 6 and the eastern half of 5 at $28,000.  By the 1815 tax digest both properties had seen modest improvements with Jones at $28,000 and Telfair $31,000.  But on March 17, 1819 “a small grocery store on Telfair’s wharf, occupied by Mr. J.M. Carter, was discovered to be on fire.”  The fire destroyed the entire riverfront block between Whitaker and Barnard, consuming all of the wooden storehouses on the Telfair and Jones wharves occupying Lots 4, 5 and 6 of Decker Ward.  Only “Bolton’s fire-proof range at the East and Taylor’s at the West” contained the conflagration.  By 1822 factors were advertising within the “Brick Building on Telfair’s wharf,” so at least part of the block in 1822 had been rebuilt in brick.

These lots marked the site not only of Jones’ Upper Wharf (Jones’ Lower Wharf being George Jones’ aforementioned Lot 4 of Reynolds) but Telfair’s Lower Wharf, given that the family also owned Wharf Lot 14 of Franklin Ward to the west.

On June 9, 1852 an extract from a letter from a Philadelphia traveler was published in the Morning News in which its correspondent opened:  “Landing at Savannah from a northern port, there may be, at first sight, some disappointment to a traveler who has heard much of the beauty of the city.  The warehouses along the wharves have a blackened, antiquated look.”  And it was true that by 1852 very little had changed on the riverfront profile in decades.  It was this new structure on the Upper Jones Wharf that would change that, ushering in that 1850s building spree which we’ve already seen displayed in the Stoddard Ranges, Claghorn & Cunningham and Jones’ Lower Range.

On August 17, 1854 an advertisement appeared in the Morning News offering:  “For Rent. The upper western counting-room, and the corner wharf store, of George Jones’ new brick building on Bay street.”  By November of that year, Boston & Villalonga and Wm. King & Sons had posted notices of their removal to the property.  If the documentation is correct, this Jones/Telfair Building may have represented the first large-scale construction on the Bay since the Anderson Stores of 1836, but this construction was so much larger, elegant and more modern than others then on the riverfront so as to usher in a new era.  In the tax digest of 1858 the Jones portion of the new range at Lot 4 and half of Lot 5 was valued at $72,000; the Telfair portion of 5’s half-lot and all of Lot 6 was valued at $46,000.  The Jones/Telfair Building was the shiny new object… at least for a couple of years.  Over the next five years four more imposing superstructures would go up in those blocks east of the Exchange, all emulating the size and scope of this one.

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202 – 206 West Bay Street, “William Taylor Stores” (Wharf Lot 3 West of Bull)

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Between 1806 and 1818 –  Built for William Taylor. Elements of the eastern half probably date to 1806, western half (and perhaps upper level) 1818-19

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Oldest of the bunch.  Though so many of these riverfront buildings were constructed in piecemeal over generations, this one’s oldest “pieces” would appear to date earlier than the other building’s pieces.  With elements of its structure probably dating back to 1806, this likely represents the oldest remaining construction on today’s River Street.

As we’ll see shortly, the William Taylor stores comprise two adjoining structures which were probably erected about a decade apart.  The Taylor Stores and the Archibald Smith Stores represent the earlier iteration of the riverfront, the riverfront of the early 19^th century, largely unpolluted by the 1850s modernization.

The company of Taylor & Miller was advertising as early as 1796, at which time there clearly was a frame structure on the site known as “the red Store, on Taylor & Miller’s Wharf, facing the Bluff.”  The company existed until Richard Miller’s death in 1800, at which time Taylor entered into partnership with William Scarbrough.  Merchant William Timmon’s advertisements promoting his factorage referred to “Taylor’s new buildings” as early as November, 1803, but the first unmistakable reference to a “stone building” on the wharf came with the dawn of 1807.

From the Patriot and Commercial Advertiser, January 1, 1807:

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Later the same year, from the Federal Republican Advocate and Commercial Advertiser, October 22, 1807, another reference to “the large stone building”:

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Savannah Republican, September 24, 1811: 

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December 24, 1812:

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Clearly, elements of the current building date to 1806, but this stone building advertised in print may or may not have been recognizable as the structure we see today.  There is evidence to suggest that the current structures saw significant expansion at later dates.  A February, 1817 survey map by John McKinnon displayed the eastern majority of the property (today’s 202 & 204 West Bay) but did not depict the western portion of the property (206 West Bay, depicted in red). 

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So the Taylor Stores, as of this 1817 survey, consisted of only the eastern portion of today’s 202-204 West Bay, marked on the map “d” and in black… the red outline I added to illustrate the future footprint of 206, but did not yet exist.

There is also evidence to suggest the building/buildings originally did not immediately rise above the bluff, in which case the 1806 property was likely two stories with a pitched roof—one story on the Factors’ Walk side—with its additional levels added in 1818 or thereafter.  In the September, 1818 advertisement below Taylor referred to his building as “lately erected,” which could be seen as its enlargement—either via the western portion, or additional levels (…or likely, both):

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Below is a collection of Taylor’s wharf lot entries in the tax digests between 1809 and 1824.  While the property remained largely static between 1809 and 1817, a dramatic increase occurred between the 1819 and 1820 volumes, lifting its valuation from $30,000 to $45,000.  This suggests the building may have taken its current shape and form between 1818 and 1819.  By 1824 the property had settled back to $25,000; due likely not to any tangible process, but more likely the general decrease in valuation as a result of the depression of the 1820s.

One Mr. C.C. Griswold seems to have been in early tenant in the finished property.  Just to illustrate the point that these factors bought and sold virtually anything, here’s a Griswold 1821 advertisement offering to exchange a prime pew seat rental in the Presbyterian Church for the Episcopal… meaning, it appears, someone had just changed denominations.

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You might recall from our examination of the Anderson Stores (410-402 East Bay Street) that the short-lived partnership of Clark & Pelot began here at the Taylor Stores, and that in addition to wholesale groceries, they also sold eight slaves in January of 1837 from this location.  This was not the only time the property hosted slave sales.  Henry Harford entered into the factorage business in 1809, in 1811 he moved his business to the Taylor Stores.  From the March 3, 1812 Savannah Republican:

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Later in the year another slave sale was offered.

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In years past I had always dismissed the notion that slaves were sold within the current structures of River Street—and for the most part this is true—but these examples serve to remind that whatever the claim, whatever the certainty, there are always exceptions.

Here’s an image gallery of the Taylor Store; the first image is circa mid-1960s, the other two are circa 1940, I believe Library of Congress images.  Whether originally two stories or four, this 1806 eastern portion of the building represents, in all likelihood, the oldest surviving construction of today’s Riverfront.  From the view below it is very tempting to draw a line where the second story ends and imagine it with a pitched roof.

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208 – 218 West Bay Street, “Lowden Building” (Wharf Lot 2 West of Bull)

1909/1910 –  Built for George Lowden

From 1803 through the 1850s Wharf Lot 2 West of Bull was known as George Anderson’s Upper Wharf.  Though his building still stands on East River Street today, this Upper Wharf was his primary place of commercial business until his death in 1847.  From the 1860s thereafter this wharf was referred to as Haywood & Gage’s “Ice House wharf.”  The ice house building preceding today’s 1910 structure had a high-pitched roof and was illustrated on the 1891 Birdseye.

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220 – 230 West Bay Street, “Johnston Range” (Wharf Lots 1 & 16 West of Bull)

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Likely 1810s/1820s –  Built for Colonel James Johnston and his heirs

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Wharf Lot 16 (or to be more accurate, “Wharf Lots 1 and 16 West of Bull”) today consists of three early 19th century buildings tethered together in a fashion demonstrating, perhaps better than any other surviving wharf property today, what the “stores period” probably resembled.  Instead of a single consolidated range building we have different—slightly ramshackle—properties abutting one another, in this case rarely improved because its wharf economically peaked in the early 19th century and declined steadily thereafter.  The Mary Morrison book suggests a date as early as circa 1821 for these properties, while I have no information to refute, I am also frustrated in my attempt to confirm this conclusion.  The Johnston Range is difficult to date… but whereas my initial thought was that 1821 might be on the early end on the spectrum, I’m now considering 1821 might actually be on the later end.

Scotsman Andrew William Johnston (1735-1803) was a physician and an early merchant-factor in Savannah, his advertisements appeared in the earliest editions of the Georgia Gazette dating back to 1763.  By 1796 he and sons Matthew (1763-1803) and James (1769-1822) were advertising their recent move to a store “in Mr. Wm. Taylor’s House, under the Bluff.” The following year the Johnstons advertised that they were accepting bids for “framing and raising a two-story, wooden frame Building, 60 feet front, by 36 feet depth,” on James Robertson’s Wharf (Columbia Museum & Savannah Advertiser, June 2, 1797).

Johnston, Robertson & Company quickly went on to become a juggernaut at the turn of the 19th century, so much so that the circa 1812 Houstoun Map depicted what may be inferred as a sizable mart existing on the wharf lot.  The company of the Johnstons and James Robertson first appeared in the Columbia Museum & Savannah Advertiser in April, 1796, and for the next seven years it dominated advertising columns with tobacco, rice, pork, deer skins, indigo, lumber, shoes and Jamaican rum, while also offering a large cargo float that local planters could rent to transport.

As an import company that existed in 1790s Savannah it did not regularly engage in slave sales, but strangely in 1798 it did host the final slave ship of Savannah’s Atlantic trade, a brig called the Aurora.  As a result in October of 1798 the company hosted a sale of “ninety-six choice and healthy NEW NEGROES,” on the wharf, consisting of “men, women, boys and girls, imported in the Brig Aurora, William Kewans, Master, from Bance Island.”  From the notorious slave castle at Bance Island to Wharf Lot 16 West of Bull, here was the final example of African importation of the Atlantic trade to the riverfront, even if no building on today’s wharf yet existed to witness the event. Captain Kewans likely arrived ill; he died in Savannah soon thereafter.  His estate was sold off by the very firm that had assisted him in life, an auction administered by Matthew Johnston where “six very likely New Negro Men Boys” were to be auctioned away with “sundry other articles,” offered, as one might note, with a few bags of coffee.

While it is unclear how many slaves Matthew might have personally owned—it seems from one of the advertisements below he might have bought some from the Aurora offering—the record suggests his slaves ran away from him on a regular basis.

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The Aurora was the last slave ship to come to the port of Savannah; there were no further slave importations appearing in the record, and Atlantic slave trade became illegal in Georgia by 1799. 

In 1803, at the peak of the company’s prosperity, Johnston, Robertson & Co. was fatally crippled by the deaths of three of its four partners.  Wharf owner James Robertson died in March, and though the senior Johnston had earlier retired, on July 13, 1803 he really retired; the Columbia Museum & Savannah Advertiser eulogized him: “DIED–on Thursday the 13th inst. after a long illness, Mr. ANDREW WILLIAM JOHNSTON of this city, merchant.”  In November elder son Matthew died as well, leaving only Andrew’s youngest son James, now 34.  On November 23, the sole surviving partner advertised the dissolution of the company and announced that he was continuing business on the wharf alone.  The name, fame and lot of Johnston, Robertson & Co. lingered on in spirit, but after 1803 it was only James M. Johnston at Wharf Lots 1 & 16. 

Like William Hunter and Archibald Smith (…and Archibald Smith’s mom), Johnston was another wharf owner calling Reynolds Square home, claiming four of the five tything lots on Congress Street between Abercorn and Lincoln; in the 1809 tax digest he owned six slaves.  Also like other wharf owners, by 1818 he had acquired an additional lower wharf; Wharf Lot 7 and the eastern half of 6, East of Lincoln (site today of the Tidewater Oil Building/Old Harbour Inn, which began this survey), meaning that by 1818 George Anderson was Johnston’s wharf neighbor to the west on Johnston’s Lower Wharf and his wharf neighbor to the east on his Upper Wharf.

While his house and lower wharf properties do not survive today, he also owned a property at the northwest corner of Whitaker and Bay streets, which does.  Valued at $1500 in the 1816 tax digest, the property rose to $1800 by 1817 and $5500 by 1820, suggesting it was built in 1819.  Sustaining damage in the 1820 Fire, the building was repaired and improved to a value of $6000 by 1823.  This building, still standing today, was the non-wharf contemporary counterpart to the structures on the Johnston Wharf Lot just a few hundred feet away.

Of the three buildings that make up the Johnston Range on Wharf 16 today (the “Johnston Triptych,” if you will), the eastern and western buildings are three stories, while the middle is four stories.

Between 1809 and 1820 factorages under Dimas Ponce, Laban Swain, Johnston & Hill and Rea & Butler all advertised from the wharf or counting house of James Johnston… and of course, it is important to note the property in question was no longer that simple two-story frame building of 1797.   An 1812 advertisement of A. Richards referred to “colonel Johnston’s brick stores,” in November of 1816 Dimas Ponce proudly advertised that he had “rented colonel Johnston’s wharf and fire proof Stores,” and in 1820 Charles Levistone advertised “the lower Store in the brick building on Johnston’s upper wharf” for rent.  Clearly, the wharf hosted quality brick structures by this period between 1812-1820, and it is tempting to believe those brick and fire-proof structures alluded to might be one or more of those still standing today.  The A. Richards reference to “colonel Johnston’s brick stores” suggested the site bordered the Williamson Wharf, which offers the possibility that today’s western brick building could date to 1812.

The wharf began its tax assessment history valued at $22,000 in the 1809 tax digest; the following year it rose to $25,000 and there it more or less settled for most of the next decade.  The value dropped slightly in 1817 to $24,000 before bumping up to $27,000 in the tax digests of 1819-1821.  A colonel in the Georgia militia, James Johnston was a respected figure in Savannah society, passing away in July 1822 at the age of 53.  Following his death the wharf—which had already represented a three-way split between James, brother Matthew’s estate and James Robertson’s widow Jane—was now a six-way split including Johnston’s son-in-law William R. Waring, Johnston’s young daughter Louisa (1806-1837) and even younger son William (1812-1876).  The Johnston children’s interests were managed by their older brother George Johnston.  The Robertson estate holdings were confined only to the wharf lot; the buildings upon were owned by Waring and the Johnston heirs.  The 1828 tax digest defined Waring’s holding as “1 Tenement of Bdgs Johnston Whf;” Louisa’s property was identified in the same volume as the “western tenement” on the property.

In 1824 the wharf lot bumped up again to the value of $32,000; it remained fairly stagnant in that $30,000 – $33,000 valuation over the next decade, rendering it difficult to reconcile any later date of construction for the buildings now standing.  Under different circumstances it would be easy to suggest a later construction date, but the wharf spent the post-James Johnston era in a dramatic commercial decline from its early century prominence; and as the wharf was overseen by increasingly fragmented and less interested parties it seems difficult to imagine that any of the parties would have been encouraged or had the freedom to make dramatic improvements.  By 1860 the next generation found the wharf lot valued at $36,000 but still fragmented among multiple parties of Johnston and Robertson descendants, and no merchant had regularly advertised from Johnston’s Wharf since the 1830s.  In 1871 William Remshart came into possession of the Lot 1 portion; by 1876 much of the lot was offered at county sale, with Johnston heirs retaining only a “remaining fraction… of the wharf property.”

Today a circa-1963 sheet metal addition obscures one half of the range’s Bay Street/Williamson Street facade and bridges Factors’ Walk.  The eastern building and half of the middle building (220-224 East Bay Street) retain the range’s original 19th century facade, while the western building and half of the middle structure (addresses spanning 226-230 East Bay) remain obfuscated behind a two-story 1960s portico/retail space of sheet rock and metal.

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302 – 310 Williamson Street, “Williamson Range” (Wharf Lot 15 West of Bull)

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Likely 1819 (improvements, 1850-53) –  Built for John P. Williamson and his sons

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John Postell Williamson (1778-1843) was a grocer, factor, businessman, multiple-plantation owner, judge, alderman, Mayor of Savannah and father to 15 children.  It was during his 1808-09 tenure as mayor that tax digests came into being, making every 1809 resident groan but every 21st century researcher’s life easier.  Originally partnered with John Morel on the latter’s Commerce Row Wharf 7 lot, Williamson advertised in 1804 that following Morel’s retirement he was now partnering with John Cowling and continuing his factorage/grocery.  Seven years later he advertised the dissolution of Williamson & Cowling and took possession of Wharf Lot 15 West of Bull (described as “late George Scott’s” property), appearing promptly in his newspaper advertisements of January, 1811 and first appearing under his ownership in the 1812 tax digest valued at $20,000.  He also owned “Strand Lot & Builds.,” valued at $7000, which is to say he owned the lot and buildings above the bluff immediately south of the wharf.  The configuration of Williamson’s properties is still visible today.

Our current Williamson Street emerged out of this particular situation, a lane providing access and effectively dead-ending at the Williamson properties.  “Williamson Street” would not appear in print until after the Civil War; it was never really formally named, but following two generations of association with the Williamson properties its unofficial title had simply taken hold.

Following his years as a factor in the Jones Stores, Petite de Villers co-partnered with John Williamson in August of 1815; for the next four years the two maintained a factorage on the wharf.  Williamson’s personal residence was on the north end of Liberty Square, in fact, across the street from William Taylor’s residence; it may be inferred that in the early 19th century the 1799 Liberty Square neighborhood, though largely lost to us today, was like Reynolds Square—a coveted neighborhood for Savannah’s up-and-coming merchant class.

Valued at $20,000 in the 1816 and 1817 tax digests, the Williamson wharf properties topped out at $45,000 with the 1820 tax digest.  Given this valuation—more than the $40,000 valuation of the Smith Stores in 1817 and equal to the $45,000 assessment of the Taylor Stores in 1820—I am forced to contend with the real possibility that the range could trace its construction to 1819.  The Morrison book attributes its date to 1850, but if one is to believe that the neighboring Johnston Range dates to or prior to the 1820s—a range so similar in look and construction, and whose commercial prospects likewise peaked pre-1820—it invites a re-evaluation and argues a similar early date for the Williamson Range. 

In digging deeper it becomes clear that at some point early in 1819 the wharf did experience a fire; a February 10 notice in the Daily Republican referred to “the late fire on Messrs Williamson & De-Viller’s wharf,” and the City’s Treasurer’s Report recorded that in April of 1819 the city had repaid various parties for “sundry articles furnished at the fire on Williamson’s Wharf.”  Perhaps more tellingly, a hand-scribbled note in the tax digest of 1819 indicated that Williamson’s wharf valuation had been remitted by one half after the fact, implying serious property damage.  This same protocol would be applied the next year to properties damaged or destroyed in the Fire of 1820.

The March 30 Daily Republican listed a ship arrival of bricks to J.P. Williamson; seven weeks later another ship arrived, the Sarah & Hannah, “with bricks—to Williamson & de Villers.”  It seems likely the wharf stores were entirely rebuilt, resulting in the massive $45,000 valuation the following year.  Tellingly, as we’ll see later, in 1889 the Morning News presumed that the Williamson Building “was probably 75 years old,” an estimate which in 1889 would correspond better to 1819 than it would to 1850.  In August of 1819 Williamson advertised his new “fire-proof stores,” which would be open and available for business in the next three weeks.

While the lot was still valued at $40,000 in 1821, following the Savannah fire and economic depression of 1820s the lot valuation settled back to $25,000 by 1826, and there it remained unchanged for the next two and a half decades.  Williamson gradually retired from public life during the 1830s; he died in 1843 with his wharf lot still valued at $25,000.

A few years after his death, in 1848 the estate of John Williamson advertised “New Fire Proof Ware Houses, near the West end of the Bay,” a reference to the Strand warehouses (pictured below) on the south side of Williamson Street.  These properties were built between 1847 and 1848.  Curiously, the tax digest valuations for this Strand lot failed to reflect any improvements, their valuation reading unchanged at $5000 throughout the 1844-1849 period.

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Williamson’s holdings were so extensive and complicated that, somewhat famously, the distributions of his estate were still being litigated by heirs 53 years later in 1896; it took some seven years for the wharf properties to be distributed.  In 1850 Wharf Lot 15 and its rear Strand buildings were divided in thirds among his sons John Williamson, from his first marriage, and the much younger William Henry Williamson and James Potter Williamson, from his second.

By the 1853 tax digests the valuations for each of the heirs bumped up to $12,000 each and by 1854 to $15,000, elevating the total valuation for Lot 15 from $25,000 in 1850 to $45,000 in 1854 and suggesting serious improvements on the wharf.  If the range that stands today is not from 1819 then it likely saw its construction in this 1850-53 period; likewise, if it was built in 1819 then it clearly saw generous improvements.  By 1856 James Potter came into possession of brother William’s property; John and James held the lot between them for the next decade as the lot value settled back to $32,000.

According to the 1868 tax digest Ira Sturges came into possession of the western 2/5 of the lot in 1867. Valued at $8000, the following year Haywood & Gage bought this 2/5 property, advertising in 1869 space available within No. 10, the westernmost tenement. 

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This same year of 1869 found James financially in arrears for back taxes, likely frustrating brother John, who was serving at the time as City Treasurer; in 1869 James’ holding was offered up at auction.  He retained his interest in the rear Williamson Street lots for another decade until that too was seized and offered at auction; by 1881 only John remained, holding his 1/5 share.

In 1871 the United Hydraulic Cotton Press bought the western 2/5 lot from Haywood & Gage; improvements on the lot in the 1872 tax digest were valued at $11,000.

The eastern three tenements of the Williamson brothers:

The western 2/5 of the range (307-309 River Street), distinguished by its cresting roof line:

In 1879 this western 2/5 of the range suffered a fire; five years after the conflagration the 1884 Sanborn Map still referred to the westernmost tenement “Ruins” and described the second westernmost “open to roof.”  Whether the differing appearance today of this western 2/5 arose as a result of the fire and subsequent reconstruction or was originally intended is unclear.

Another fire a decade later impacted the eastern half and resulted in similarly extensive damage.  “All the floors of the eastern half of the building were gutted except the first two, and the floors of the third, fourth, and fifth stories gave way,” the July 10, 1889 Morning News reported.  With portions of the building reduced to external walls, the newspaper concluded:  “The building was owned by Capt. John Flannery and was uninsured.  It was known as the Williamson building and was probably 75 years old.  The estimated damage by the fire is $10,000.”

Following the fires of 1879 and 1889 another fire threatened in 1898, destroying the Hydraulic Cotton Press warehouse to the west, but the Williamson Range survived to see another day.  In 1892 the “Williamson sheds” (the 1848 Strand warehouses) on the south side of Williamson Street were sold off in a court house sale to Herman Myers for $10,000 (June 8, 1892 Morning News).

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In 1874 the (mostly) vacant lots to the west of the Williamson property were sold off to the United Hydraulic Cotton Press, as they continued their empire to the west.  On April 6, 1874 the Savannah Morning News published an article remarking of an increased demand for cotton storage facilities, celebrating the fact that the western end of River Street was soon to be in store for another one; the UHCP was expanding its warehousing facilities all the way to West Broad.

1874/1898 –  Built for the United Hydraulic Cotton Press Company

In quick succession Wharf Lot 14 (Upper Telfair Wharf) had gone from the Telfairs to the Wetters to Purse & Thomas before being bought in 1869 by the United Hydraulic Cotton Press Company. Merging this property with Wharf Lots 10-13—which they had previously owned—and portions of Lot 15—which they added in 1871—the company was now poised to dominate the western end of River Street. Marking the last of the buildings on the western end of River Street east of West Broad, the United Hydraulic Cotton Press Building officially opened for business just months after the above announcement.  “The splendid new cotton warehouse of the United Hydraulic Cotton Press Company, corner of River and Montgomery, was yesterday formally opened for business,” the September 30, 1874 Morning News reported.

In 1898 the building caught fire; what we see today was a rebuild later that year within its shell.  The 1898 Sanborn Map captured that snapshot of time between the fire and the rebuild, referring to the shell as “Ruins of fire”.  By the next edition of the map in 1916 the property had be rebuilt.

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