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Our River Street location is on the most
famous street in Savannah! Our restaurant is on the
edge of the Savannah River amongst history and culture.
A brief history of our
River Street location... Bernie's resides in a
pre-Civil War warehouse built in 1817 that was used to store
cotton bound to destinations all over the world. The
first two floors of the building were constructed with
ballast stones used to weigh down the empty ships sailing
into the Savannah harbor to pick up cotton. These
"cobblestones" were discarded to make room for their cargo
and reused to build warehouses and pave River Street.
The extra wide, arched doorways you see were designed to
make it easy to move cotton bales in and out of the
warehouses. In 1799 a gentleman by the name of Eli
Whitney was invited to Savannah by the widow of General
Nathaniel Greene to provide tutoring for her children.
During his stay, Mrs. Greene mentioned the difficulty that
farmers had in separating the cotton seed from the plant's
tenacious fibers. Intrigued by the problem, Mr.
Whitney locked himself away in the barn of the plantation
for ten days, emerging with a prototype of his now-famous
cotton gin. His invention was largely responsible for
making cotton "King" of southern commerce. The
subsequent prosperity led to an expansions of this building,
when the top three floor were added in 1853. |
River Street and
Tybee Island |
