Charles Corey Taber (1821-1892)
of New York City; Cotton Broker & Founder of the Cotton Exchange
He was born at Westport, Connecticut. During the Civil War, he was a cotton broker in partnership with his brother, Henry Morehouse Taber, as CC & HM Taber, of New York. Because of the difficulty of getting orders through during the war, he bought his own steamship line that operated between New York and Providence and he was principally responsible for creating the Cotton Exchange. After the war, he became a real estate developer and he was the first person to build basement houses in New York, on 12th Street, having first seen them in England when he was twenty-one. His own house (see images) on the corner of Fifth Avenue is now the Salmagundi Club. After his first wife died he moved to 23rd Street where he built the first row of basement houses running west from the old Academy of Design to Madison Ave.
