The Cotton Exchange is a complex of converted 19th-century warehouses along the Cape Fear River waterfront, now housing specialty shops, restaurants, and bars across eight interconnected buildings. It's a pleasant place for a browse and a meal, and the brick-and-timber interior preserves the character of the original cotton-trade buildings that once handled a significant portion of the South's export crop.
Wilmington was one of the major cotton export ports of the antebellum South, and the riverfront warehouses are a physical remnant of that history. The Exchange opened in its current retail form in 1976 and was one of the early adaptive reuse projects that helped revive downtown Wilmington before the wider gentrification of the area. The riverfront setting — views across the Cape Fear to the USS North Carolina battleship — is the added attraction.