On 13 October 1931 Charleston City Council ratified a zoning ordinance that drew a line around part of the lower peninsula and declared the buildings inside it worth protecting. It was the first historic district zoning law in the United States. The ordinance created a 138-acre Old and Historic District and a five-member Board of Architectural Review, drawn from bodies such as the Real Estate Exchange and the South Carolina Art Association, to review changes to the buildings within it. The council's chamber had been in City Hall at 80 Broad Street since 1882, in a building put up for the Charleston branch of the First Bank of the United States and the city's seat since 1819. Its opening words promise to promote the general welfare by preserving and protecting historic places.
The push came from the Society for the Preservation of Old Dwellings, founded in 1920 by Susan Pringle Frost, a suffragist thought to be Charleston's first woman realtor, and a small group worried for the Joseph Manigault House of about 1802. Through the 1920s Standard Oil had pulled down downtown houses to build filling stations, and the city wanted stations and repair shops kept out. The Pittsburgh planning firm of Morris Knowles surveyed the old buildings with Albert Simons.
The first board's powers were narrow. A 1959 revision widened them, a 1967 enlargement nearly tripled the district, and by a count made in the 2000s it took in more than 4,800 historic structures. The society became the Preservation Society of Charleston in 1957.
Getting there
32.7767, -79.9308
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop is an audio tour guide app that tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
