Before the building existed, the exchange itself served a singular purpose: to give cotton factors a place to congregate and set the market value of cotton exported from Savannah to New York City and London. Factors were brokers who served planters' interests, the middlemen connecting Southern fields to global textile mills. The exchange was established in 1876, when Savannah was one of the world's great cotton ports, the white fiber flowing down the Savannah River and out to sea. General William Washington Gordon II, a veteran of the Battle of Jonesboro in 1864, served as chairman. By the June 10, 1878 edition of the New York Times, the exchange was publishing monthly business summaries for the nation's financial readers. This was serious commerce, and the building that would house it had to match the ambition.

The current building at 100 East Bay Street, completed in 1887, stands at the intersection of Savannah's two worlds. Above, the ornate brick and terra cotta facade faces the genteel businesses of Bay Street and Factors Walk, the elevated promenade where cotton merchants once conducted their affairs. Below, through a tunnel that replaced the old warehouses, lies River Street, the rough-and-tumble waterfront where bales were loaded onto ships. Preston's design bridges these two levels literally, the building spanning the gap between upper and lower Savannah like a piece of architecture suspended between social classes. The ramp beneath it still carries foot traffic today, pedestrians passing underneath the same iron pillars that have held the structure aloft for well over a century.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the factorage system that had sustained the exchange was crumbling. More planters were selling their cotton at interior markets rather than shipping to Savannah for brokering. The extensive rail connections that once made Savannah indispensable began working against it, carrying cotton directly to buyers without the need for coastal middlemen. The exchange held on for decades, but the economics had shifted permanently. In 1951, the Savannah Cotton Exchange went out of business, closing the books on seventy-five years of setting cotton prices in the humid air above River Street.

Since 1976, the building has served as home to Solomon's Lodge No. 1, Free and Accepted Masons, one of the most historically significant Masonic lodges in the Americas. The lodge was established in 1734 by General James Oglethorpe, the founder of the Province of Georgia, making it one of the oldest continuously operating lodges in the Western Hemisphere. Where cotton brokers once haggled over bale prices, Freemasons now conduct their ancient rituals in a building that already had more than its share of history. The Savannah Chamber of Commerce is sometimes erroneously cited as the current occupant, but the chamber moved across the street to 101 East Bay Street years ago.