In a Georgia city known for its historic buildings, an iconic structure is up for sale for the first time in about 150 years, according to the real estate firm listing it.
The 1886 Savannah Cotton Exchange was a center of the global cotton trade for about four decades during the heyday of Georgia’s cotton era, which ended roughly in the 1920s.
The building’s red brick facade includes motifs of the crop.
Visitors and residents also might know it by the much-photographed water-spouting gryphon statue that stands in front of it or the public street that sits below it. The public gryphon statue and street are not part of the sale.
Inside the building, it’s just as striking, Ann Boese of real estate firm Engel & Volkers said.
“It’s like a time capsule,” she said. “You walk into the foyer and then you go into the trading floor and the energy is still there.”
For the past 50 or so years, the state’s oldest Masonic lodge, Solomon’s Lodge No. 1, had used the building for meetings and special occasions.
The lodge is home to a Bible and sword attributed to Georgia founder James Oglethorpe.
But declining membership and increasing maintenance costs prompted the Masons to initiate a sale, Boese said.
The real estate firm is listing it at $10 million and suggests it could be used as an event facility, a restaurant or a luxury apartment.
“We really hope and want that anybody who does purchase the building will fall in love with the interior details because that is what the building is all about — in addition to the exterior — and use it in a way that maintains its historic integrity,” Boese said.
The listing comes as high-profile former office buildings in the Savannah National Historic Landmark District convert to tourism uses.
Recent examples of such conversions include the Municipal Grand Hotel and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
This article comes to Now Habersham in partnership with GPB News
