Adger’s Wharf, 1930-1940

Residing in downtown Charleston, past modern shops, stalls, and restaurants, resides a small gem of Charleston’s history. Adger’s Wharf is a small slice of historic Charleston that we still have today. Developed in 1735, it gained its name and reputation in 1842 when it was sold to the shipping magnate James Adger. It is through these wharves that sea island cotton was sold and exported from the city and where the Mosquito fleet would lay anchor. With colonial revival architecture, cobblestone streets, some of Charleston’s few surviving colonial-era wharves, the location has become a cultural center of ‘downtown’ Charleston. “Downtown, in sum, was patrician and cultured and historical and scenic and romantic and literary. (Rubin 2)

This, too, came about in the swing of the Charleston Renaissance, which had begun in the year 1920 and had begun to hit their stride. However, the Great Depression had hit all of America, with Charleston being no exception. So, Charleston found its value where no one else could- in the city’s history. “One reason for this was that there wasn’t much money around Charleston then, and thus only so much opportunity for conspicuous consumption.” (Rubin 3) The Society for the Preservation of Old Dwellings was founded in 1920, and the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals being founded shortly thereafter in 1921.

Adger’s Wharf became one of the first neighborhoods to the society’s first preservation attempts, falling in the boundaries of Charleston’s first historic district zoning law, a 138-acre “Old and Historic District” created in 1931. After this zoning, the wharf saw the first shift in trying to preserve, revitalize, and sell some of Charleston’s most historic neighborhoods. In this time, many of the old cotton warehouses and factor’s offices began to be converted into residential living spaces. It began to be commoditized and sold, piece by piece, to tourists who “extolled in magazines articles as contributing to the “quaintness” and the “romantic atmosphere” of an old seaport town.” (Rubin 6)

The wharf had become the living embodiment of its people. It gained notoriety for its history, and that’s what gave it value. Much like the old families of Charleston, whose “Inherited social position was almost all there was to be snobbish about, so that almost the only area in which persons in search of status could look to demonstrate it was in genealogical distinction.” (Rubin 3) The Wharf made itself out to be more important that its own history and the deep roots that it had in Charleston’s inception. It shined the most when compared to the more modern trappings found in Charleston’s growing Uptown. It was like Rubin described to be his own Jewish faith, how his family belonged to the old ‘Reform’ generation, while Charleston’s other synagogues adopted the ‘newer’ Orthodox.  “The result was that by the time of my own generation- the generation growing up the in the 1920s and 1930s- those who remained held on self-consciously to their position, looked down socially upon the Orthodox community, and took satisfaction in their supposed absence of secular identity.” (Rubin 5)

However, what ended up giving this portion of Charleston significance, was not solely its historical value. No, because in the years 1930-1940, Adger’s Wharf had begun to resemble what Charleston was becoming: a fusion of the ‘downtown’ and ‘uptown’, ‘old’ and ‘new’. This is seen all throughout the Wharf’s history- once one of Charleston’s most historically preserved locations, became Charleston’s first mandated-by-law historic zones. This modern zoning officially deemed it as historic, yet at the same invited modern homes to restore the crumbling buildings into new ‘historic’ homes. It was a paradox, but one only functional in a city whose history is as textured as Charleston’s. It gave the wharf a view like no other, and Rubin said it best: “What the intervening years have done is not to change the city that my memory knows, but only the distance from which I view it.” (Rubin 11)

 

Works Cited

“Collections, Adger’s Wharves (Charleston, SC).” Adger’s Wharves (Charleston, S.C.) | Charleston Museum, 2022, https://www.charlestonmuseum.org/research/collection/?subject=Adger%27s+Wharves+%28Charleston%2C+S.C.%29.

 

“Explore Charleston Through Time.” Historic Charleston, SC Interactive Fire, Zoning, District Maps, Historic Charleston Foundation, https://www.historiccharleston.org/research/maps/.

 

Gurley, Robert. “Preservation Society of Charleston.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, 26 Jan. 2017, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/preservation-society-of-charleston/.

 

Rubin, Louis. “Prologue: Adger’s Wharf, » Small Craft Advisory: A Book About the Building of a Boat, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991.

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