United States Customhouse, Federal courthouse in Savannah, United States.

The United States Customhouse is a Greek Revival building at the corner of Bull and East Bay Streets in Savannah, Georgia. It is eleven bays wide and five bays deep, built of 32-inch blocks of gray granite quarried in Quincy, Massachusetts. A pedimented portico with six monolithic columns, each weighing 15 to 20 tons, faces the street, and a cast-iron fence with balusters shaped like closed tobacco leaves and fleur-de-lis surrounds the lot.

Savannah's first U.S. Custom House opened in 1789 on East Bay Street; the second, on East Bryan Street, burned in 1837. The federal government bought the East Bay and Bull Streets corner in 1845, and New York architect John S. Norris saw construction through from the 1848 cornerstone to completion in 1852. In 1860 the Wanderer slave-trade case was tried here, and in 1861 the Confederate flag was raised above it.

Colonel John H. Deveaux made history in 1889 as the first African American Customs Collector while working in this federal building.

The building continues to house a customs facility alongside federal courts and administrative offices. Visitors should know this is an active government site and access may have restrictions.

The cast-iron railing of the interior stair repeats the closed tobacco leaf motif of the exterior fence, and its newel posts copy the granite columns of the main facade. The stair sits inside a semi-circular rotunda, and original wood panel doors follow the curve of the surrounding walls.