River Street (Savannah, Georgia)

River Street

Looking west along River Street to the Talmadge Memorial Bridge from in front of the Jones and Telfair Range, 2013
Namesake	Savannah River
Length	2.0 mi (3.2 km)
Location	Savannah, Georgia, U.S.
West end	North and East Lathrop Ave
East end	East Bay Street

River Street is a commercial street and promenade in Savannah, Georgia, United States. It runs along the southern edge of the Savannah River for 2 miles (3.2 km), from the merging of North and East Lathrop Avenues in the west to East Bay Street in the east. Its most well-known section runs from the Talmadge Memorial Bridge, then below City Hall and Yamacraw Bluff, to its eastern terminus. It is West River Street up to where the Hyatt Regency Savannah spans it. It is here, around 40 feet (12 m) below Bay Street, that it becomes East River Street. The street is one-way (westbound) from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Today, East River Street consists largely of restaurants, cafés and craft shops, and is one of the city's major tourist attractions. Its half-mile-long pedestrian promenade, the John P. Rousakis Riverfront Plaza, is named for Savannah's longest-serving mayor (1970–1992).^[1]

At its downtown stretch, the street's southern side is populated by terraces of former King Cotton warehouses, the industrial rear portions of the more fashionable Bay Street frontages. Factors Row, a bluffside row of red-brick buildings where cotton brokers bargained during the product's heyday, helps preserve this industry in its name. Factors Walk is "built on the middle level of a sloping bluff with warehouses beneath and Bay Street above."^[2] The warehouses were also used as holding cells for African slaves.^[3]