Solomon's Lodge No. 1, Free and Accepted Masons, was founded in 1734, the year after the colony began, by James Lacey and General James Oglethorpe. It is believed to be the oldest continuously operating English-constituted lodge in the Western Hemisphere, though St. John's Lodge in Portsmouth claims that title too. It is the mother lodge of Georgia's Grand Lodge, and from 1734 to 1785 it was the only lodge in Georgia. Its first initiate was the settler Noble Jones, and it took the name Solomon's Lodge in 1776.

Since 1976 the lodge has met in the old Savannah Cotton Exchange at 100 East Bay Street, now called Freemasons' Hall. The red-brick exchange was completed in 1887, when Savannah was the leading cotton port on the Atlantic, with more than two million bales a year passing through. Boston architect William Gibbons Preston won the design competition over eleven rivals. The building stands on iron pillars over the old Drayton Street ramp, so traffic could still reach River Street underneath, and it is thought to be one of the few buildings in the world erected over a public street. The cotton exchange closed in 1951.

The building is a working Masonic hall, so it isn't generally open to the public. Its facade and the small park with the old iron railing on Bay Street are easy to see from outside.