The Fort Sumter House is a seven-story condominium building located at 1 King St.,

Charleston, South Carolina Charleston is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, the county seat of Charleston County, and the principal city in the Charleston–North Charleston metropolitan area. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint o ...

, originally built as the Fort Sumter Hotel. Work began on April 1, 1923, and guests were accepted starting in April 1924, but the formal opening was on May 6, 1924. The hotel cost $850,000 to build. The 225-room hotel was designed by G. Lloyd Preacher of

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

. The hotel was the site of a tryst between

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...

and a Danish woman with connection to the Nazis. On February 6, 1942, just after Kennedy arrived in Charleston for service with naval intelligence, he spent three nights at the Fort Sumter Hotel with a former Miss Denmark,

Inga Arvad Inga Marie Arvad Petersen (6 October 1913 – 12 December 1973) was a Danish-American journalist who was a guest of Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Summer Olympics and also had a romantic relationship with John F. Kennedy in 1941 and 1942. The juxta ...

. The FBI was monitoring Arvad and taped the encounters. The information was then passed to Kennedy's father, Joseph Kennedy, who, in an effort to separate his son from Arvad, had him reassigned to a PT boat in the Pacific, the now famous

PT-109 PT1 may refer to: * 486958 Arrokoth (New Horizons PT1), a Kuiper belt object and selected target for a flyby of the New Horizons probe * Pratt & Whitney PT1, a free-piston gas-turbine engine * Consolidated PT-1 Trusty, a 1930s USAAS primary trainer ...

. John F. Kennedy remarked, "They shipped my ass out of town to break us up." Starting on July 22, 1942, the hotel was used as the headquarters for the sixth naval district for $80,000 per year. It was refurbished and reopened as a hotel in 1946. In April 1947, Tennessee Williams and agent Audrey Wood met with Irene Selznick at the Fort Sumter Hotel to discuss her producing his newest play A Streetcar Named Desire (just recently renamed from the original title Poker Night). Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr, 2014, p. 127. In 1956, the hotel considered an expansion of 60 to 100 rooms to accommodate the increase in convention business seen in Charleston. The hotel was sold to

Sheraton Hotels Sheraton Hotels and Resorts is an international semi-luxury hotel chain owned by Marriott International. As of June 30, 2020, Sheraton operates 446 hotels with 155,617 rooms globally, including locations in North America, Africa, Asia Pacific, Ce ...

in 1967 for $435,000. The chain spent a further $500,000 on renovations and renamed the property the Sheraton-Fort Sumter Hotel. Sheraton sold the hotel to a group of local investors in 1973 for $850,000. They closed the hotel and spent $2 million converting the 225-room hotel into a 67-unit condominium complex. The condo units were expected to sell from $36,000 to $120,000 for a penthouse unit. The addition of the penthouse units resulted in the creation of an eighth floor, but the change was barely noticeable from outside since it was done by reworking the roof of the building.

References

{{coord, 32.788766, -79.938071, display=title Buildings and structures in Charleston, South Carolina Hotel buildings completed in 1924 Hotels established in 1924 Sheraton hotels