Atlantic Coastline Railroad Freight Warehouse, 1 Ninth Street, Augusta, Richmond County, GA

Significance: The Atlantic Coastline Railroad Freight Warehouse is located at One Ninth Street which is at the northwest corner of Ninth and Tatnall Streets in Augusta, Georgia. The building was constructed around 1915 and it is typical of rail freight facilities of that period. The long narrow structure has a loading dock and several freight doors down either side and an office area at one end. This simply styled warehouse and freight office structure has deteriorated but remains basically unchanged since it was built among the cotton and agricultural supplies businesses that once dominated the Reynolds Street, or "Cotton Row" area. It is likely that the building originally served primarily as a transshipment facility for the sorting and routing of goods in transit rather than for any type of long-term storage. The long loading dock and numerous freight doors on either side as well as the limited floor area suggest that the interior served mainly a staging area where freight was perhaps moved from rail cars to wagons for local delivery and vice versa. Such a facility may have been supported by the large number of wholesale grocers, agricultural supplies dealers, and other merchants in downtown Augusta. Markings on the freight doors such as "Augusta Arsenal ordnance" indicate that some of the loading areas had primary if not exclusive uses. The building's subsequent use after the Second World War as a storage warehouse no longer connected with the railroad probably reflects the growing dominance of the trucking industry in this type of transportation service and the diminished importance of agriculture, especially cotton, in the local economy.
Survey number: HABS GA-2377
Building/structure dates: 1915 Initial Construction