"I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city 

of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of 

ammunition, and also 25,000 bales of cotton." 

—William Tecumseh Sherman

Gallery 209 on East River Street

Gallery 209, located at 209 East River Street in the Historic District of Savannah, and found a mere stone's throw from the Savannah River, has featured a cooperative of local artists since 1975. Over nearly 50-years, the gallery has, on average, continuously hosted the artwork of 30 Savannahian artists. 

Evidence of the gallery's long-term success is that four of the current artists — Brian Attaway, Tibby Llewellyn, Randee Powell, and Sharon Saseen — have each been with Gallery 209 for over 40 years! 

I'm proud to join each of these wonderfully artistic people as one of the current resident artists in the cooperative. Together, they are all my second family, and each has become a valued colleague.

Some Gallery 209 members are jewelers, others offer 3-dimensional art, while most work as 2-D artists. Honestly, I drink my morning tea from one of Brian's handcrafted ceramic mugs. And I frequently and happily wear the designs of more than one among our gallery's talented collection of jewelers.

Like many of the buildings on River Street in Savannah, the building hosting Gallery 209, initially constructed as a waterfront cotton warehouse, still finds a beneficial role. It likely once held many of the 25,000 bales of cotton General William Tecumseh Sherman confiscated when he captured Savannah before presenting them as a gift to President Abraham Lincoln just before Christmas Day in 1864. 

After ending his infamous March to the Sea, burning his way through Georgia from Atlanta, Sherman wrote the above telegram at his desk in the Green-Meldrim Mansion (see PFS-61), his temporary military headquarters found just off Savannah's Madison Square.

River Street in Savannah is a long and enjoyable walk from end to end. There are dozens of shops and restaurants to entertain and please the tastes of anyone.

Naturally, my favorite activity is watching the large cargo ships sail up the Savannah River from the Atlantic Ocean to reach the port and then see them return down the river from whence they came.

Found just behind the Gallery 209 building is one of Savannah's most popular hidden gems: Factors Walk. Before the American Civil War, the four southern states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi alone produced over half of the world's cotton. Cotton factors, or brokers, performed many essential services for their clients, the cotton planters. 

Factors Walk in Savannah is named after such traders. Suppose you wander up the cobblestone walkway from River Street. In that case, you'll discover on the bluff's level just behind the Gallery 209 building the backsides of the waterfront warehouses. Herein once housed the offices of many factors, among other professionals employed commensurate with the cotton industry.

There are three levels on Factors Walk to search through, and you'll often be walking on pedestrian metal bridges that still feature a look and feel similar to that found over two hundred years ago. The frequency of employment by cotton planters of the factorage system rapidly decreased after the Civil War, with the stunning advances in finance, transportation, and communication technologies. 

The last cotton office on Savannah's waterfront finally closed in 1956.