A funny story unfolded the day my wife and I visited The Wren’ Nest, in West Atlanta, several years ago. That sprawling Victorian mansion was once the home of Joel Chandler Harris and his family, onetime editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and author of the “Uncle Remus Tales” books. More on both later.

Nobody likes to pay taxes, although we all want the various services that taxes pay for! So some folks will go to great lengths to avoid them, legally or otherwise. This story is about one of them.

When Charleston, SC, was founded, in the 1700’s, the English settlers who built that charming city brought with them the English method of property taxes, which at the time was based on the “number of feet fronting the street” a building faced.

As a result, folks in Charleston began building houses and shops that were narrow on the front facing the street, but long on the side. They also added porches on the long sides of houses, now known as “Charleston porches,” usually on the eastern sides, away from the heat of the afternoon sun.

The English settlers who later founded Savannah did the same thing, and downtown Savannah has many examples of houses built in the “Charleston style.”

Savannah has one particularly unique building, the old Cotton Exchange on Factor’s Walk, high above the Savannah River. For many years it was home to the cotton brokers who bought and sold cotton, the main cash crop in the 1800’s. It has now been sold, and recent reports are that it may be turned into a museum and event center.

That beautiful building was not built on land, however; it was built on top of steel rails that stretched across a street below that led to the wharf along the river. Where that came into play later was when the city sent the first property tax bill -- which the Exchange refused to pay, claiming the building was “not subject to property taxes.”

Their reasoning? The ordinance underlying property taxes apparently stated that taxes were due on “Land and Buildings erected thereon.” Because the Cotton Exchange building was erected on air – not land – they agued that no property taxes were due. As I remember reading about it, the city took the fight all the way up to the State Supreme Court, where they lost, due to the plain language of the text of the ordinance.

That was later dubbed the first case of “air rights.” I have no idea if anyone else attempted to take advantage of that ruling, but probably not.

When my wife and I began our guided tour of The Wren’s Nest that day, at some point the tour guide told us to look around the bedroom we were in and see if we noticed anything unusual? Puzzled, we looked around, and did not notice anything in particular: four walls, a floor, windows to the outside, a roof. It all seemed standard, and unremarkable.

Finally, the tour guide smiled and said, “There are no closets!” Then she pointed to a free-standing wardrobe in a corner that held a woman’s dresses. She said that the property tax system then in use when the house was built was based on the number of rooms – and closets counted as a room! So people stopped building houses with closets, and bought free-standing wardrobes to hold their clothes in instead.

I laughed and laughed. Who would ever have thought of that?! But somebody did. An interesting point I never would have thought of, if it hadn’t been pointed out.

I am sure many other examples of “tax evasion” exist, but the Cotton Exchange and The Wren’s Nest are two of the more ingenious ones.

Next installment: More on The Wren’s Nest, and Joel Chandler Harris.

Rafe Semmes is a proud graduate of (“the original”) Savannah High School and the University of Georgia. He and his wife are both longtime Rotarians, and live in rural eastern Liberty County with their various orphan felines. He writes on a vari