Cottontown Real Estate
Cottontown, formerly known as Bellevue, is an early twentieth-century downtown Columbia suburb. In the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, the area near the Wallace tract was a bustling commercial district. The intersection of Main and Upper (later Elmwood) Streets was known as Cotton Town, named after the cotton storage warehouses that operated there. Grocery wholesale and retail establishments also operated in the area. In 1912, lots were being marketed under the neighborhood’s new name, “Bellevue”. The new community was growing quickly, with new lots being surveyed between Elmwood, Main, Franklin and Bull Streets. Between 1919 and 1927, the neighborhood expanded northward to Columbia Avenue, later changed to Anthony Avenue. In March 1913, Bellevue became one of the earliest suburban communities, after Elmwood Park, to be annexed into the city of Columbia. Communities including North Columbia, Waverly, South Waverly, and Shandon were annexed later in the same year. The neighborhood remains today as an intact example of one of the earliest planned suburban residential neighborhoods in Columbia whose appearance has been largely unaltered by the passage of time. As one of the earliest suburban areas annexed into the city of Columbia, Bellevue played an important role in the early expansion of the capital city beyond its original northern boundary. The neighborhood consists primarily of single-family homes, with some duplexes and other multi-family residences scattered throughout the district. Most of the residences were built between 1925 and 1940. In the mid 1990s Cottontown’s Neighborhood Association formed a Historic Preservation Committee. The committee worked to raise awareness of the historic, architectural, and archaeological resources worthy of historic preservation. The older “Bellevue Historic District” portion of Cottontown received federal approval and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.