River Street
Paved with the stone ballast of old sailing ships, hand-laid from quarries as far as Madeira, France, and the British Isles, River Street ran along the Savannah River where Georgia's colony was founded in 1733. By the mid-1800s the city was the world's leading exporter of cotton, and the tall four- and five-story brick warehouses lining the bluff handled the trade, with merchants called Factors setting prices along the elevated passages of Factors Walk above.
This was a rough working waterfront of taverns and the press gangs that haunted them. Today shopkeepers and visitors report apparitions of sailors and dockworkers, cold drafts inside the old cotton buildings, and the Waving Girl who still seems to watch the water for a ship that never came home.
📍 River St, Savannah, GA · Get directions