The Memphis Cotton Exchange is located in

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

Memphis,

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

, United States, on the corner of Front Street and Union Avenue. It was founded in 1874 as a result of the growing cotton market in Memphis, where trade was strong after the American Civil War. The first Cotton Exchange building was constructed in 1885. It was replaced by the Exchange Building in 1910, which housed it until a newer Cotton Exchange Building was completed in 1925.

History and location

Cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...

merchants needed a trade organization to regulate cotton marketing in the city. They were also aware of the many benefits reaped by the

New York Cotton Exchange The New York Cotton Exchange (NYCE) is a commodities exchange founded in 1870 by a group of one hundred cotton brokers and merchants in New York City. In 1998, the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT) became the parent company of the New York Cotton ...

and the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. Once established, the exchange produced rules and regulation on cotton trading and set standards for buying and pricing cotton in Memphis and the mid-South. The exchange developed a method for grading cotton to which members agreed. It operated as a "spot market" and never developed futures trading except for two short-lived experiments. The exchange developed as a source of information about world markets, and cotton merchants found they had to join as members in order to compete. The exchange also promoted "Memphis cotton" in major markets such as New York and London. For a time the Cotton Exchange was housed in what is now called the Exchange Building, built in 1910 on 9 North Second Street in Memphis. The tall, 20-story building credited to N. M. Woods housed both the Cotton and Merchant exchanges for a period. Since the decline of the exchanges in the late 20th century with diversification of the economy, it has been renovated for use as an apartment building. When the exchanges decided to have separate locations, the Memphis Cotton Exchange had a multi-story building constructed on Union Avenue; the Cotton Exchange Building opened in 1922. Cotton trading was done on the first floor, and only members of the exchange were allowed to trade there. In 1978, the trading floor was closed in favor of computer trading. The historic floor has since been remodeled and is now home to The Cotton Museum; it is used to educate the public about the industry and agriculture of cotton, the commodity crop that built the wealth of the city of Memphis for decades.Tennessee History for Kids: Memphis Cotton Exchange

Presidents of the Memphis Cotton Exchange

References

External links

* {{Coord, 35.1433, -90.0546, display=title Financial services companies established in 1874 1874 establishments in Tennessee Commodity exchanges in the United States Cotton industry in the United States