The Old Slave Mart is a building located at 6 Chalmers Street in
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 ...
that once housed an
antebellum period
In the history of the Southern United States, the Antebellum Period (from la, ante bellum, lit= before the war) spanned the end of the War of 1812 to the start of the American Civil War in 1861. The Antebellum South was characterized by ...
slave
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
auction gallery.
Constructed in 1859, the building is believed to be the last extant
slave auction facility in South Carolina. In 1975, the Old Slave Mart was added to the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
for its role in Charleston's African American history. Today, the building houses the Old Slave Mart Museum.
[National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers]
Old Slave Mart
Retrieved: 27 May 2010.[Nenie Dixon and Elias Bull]
National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for Old Slave Mart
12 February 1975. Retrieved: 27 May 2010.
The Old Slave Mart was originally part of a slave market known as Ryan's Slave Mart, which covered a large enclosed lot between Chalmers and Queen Streets. The market was established in 1856 by Charleston City Councilman Thomas Ryan, after a citywide ban on public slave auctions made private facilities necessary. Slave auctions were held at the site until approximately 1863; in 1865, the
Union Army
During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union (American Civil War), Union of the collective U.S. st ...
occupied Charleston and closed Ryan's Mart. The Old Slave Mart Museum has operated on and off since 1938.
Design
The Old Slave Mart is a by brick structure with a
stucco
Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...
ed façade. The front (south side) faces the
cobblestone
Cobblestone is a natural building material based on cobble-sized stones, and is used for pavement roads, streets, and buildings.
Setts, also called Belgian blocks, are often casually referred to as "cobbles", although a sett is distinct fro ...
-paved Chalmers Street. The building originally measured by , but an extension in 1922 gave it its current dimensions. The unique façade of the Old Slave Mart consists of octagonal pillars at each end, with a central elliptical arch comprising the entrance.
The building originally contained one large room with a ceiling. In 1878, a second floor was added, and the roof was overhauled. The arched entryway originally held an iron gate; in the late 1870s it was filled in with simple doors. Interior partitions were added in subsequent decades, dividing the first floor into three rooms.
Today, there is an iron gate in the archway once again.
History
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, slaves brought into Charleston were sold at
public auction
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...
s held on the north side of the
Exchange and Provost
The Old Exchange & Provost Dungeon, also known as the Custom House, and The Exchange, is a historic building at East Bay and Broad Streets in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. Built in 1767–1771, it has served a variety of civic institutional func ...
building.
[ After the city prohibited ''public'' slave auctions in 1856,][ enclosed slave markets sprang up along Chalmers, State, and Queen streets. One such market was Ryan's Mart, established by City Councilman and broker Thomas Ryan and his business partner James Marsh. Ryan's Mart originally consisted of a closed lot with three structures — a four-story ]barracoon
A barracoon (a corruption of Portuguese ''barracão'', an augmentative form of the Catalan loanword ''barraca'' ('hut') through Spanish ''barracón'') is a type of barracks used historically for the internment of slaves or criminals.
In the Atl ...
or slave jail, a kitchen, and a morgue or "dead house."[
In 1859, an auction master named Z. B. Oakes purchased Ryan's Mart, and built what is now the Old Slave Mart building for use as an auction gallery. The building's auction table was high and long and stood just inside the arched doorway.] In addition to slaves, the market sold real estate
Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more general ...
and stock
In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...
. Slave auctions at Ryan's Mart were advertised in broadsheet
A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long Vertical and horizontal, vertical pages, typically of . Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner (format), Berliner and Tabloid (newspaper format), ta ...
s throughout the 1850s, some appearing as far away as Galveston, Texas
Galveston ( ) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Galvesto ...
.
When Union forces occupied Charleston beginning in February 1865, the slaves still imprisoned at Ryan's Mart were freed.
In 1878, the Old Slave Mart was converted into a tenement dwelling, with a second floor added. A car dealership and showroom operated in the building in the 1920s, necessitating the expansion of the rear of the building.
Transition into a museum
In 1938, Miriam B. Wilson purchased the building and established the Old Slave Mart Museum, which initially displayed African and African-American art. Wilson operated the museum on a shoestring budget until her death in 1959. Although Wilson was from Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
, the Old Slave Mart Museum under her ownership embraced local beliefs that slavery had been good for African Americans. Wilson bequeathed the museum and its artifacts (mostly crafts made by African Americans in slavery) to the Charleston Museum
The Charleston Museum is a museum located in the Wraggborough neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina. It is one of the oldest museums in the United States. Its highly regarded collection includes historic artifacts, natural history, decora ...
which declined to take them. Wilson also sold Colonial Belle Goodies and attempted to attract a wider audience to the museum.
The museum closed in 1987 due to budgeting issues. The City of Charleston and the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission restored the Old Slave Mart in the late 1990s. The museum now interprets the history of the city's slave trade. The area behind the building, which once contained the barracoon and kitchen, is now a parking lot.
In the winter of 2018, the College of Charleston acquired several boxes of papers from the museum's early years. The collection went up for auction and was purchased by the College of Charleston for $5,400. In total, the collection was made up of 47 boxes, more than 50 linear feet of material.
See also
* Antebellum South Carolina
Antebellum South Carolina is typically defined by historians as South Carolina during the period between the War of 1812, which ended in 1815, and the American Civil War, which began in 1861.
After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the ec ...
References
External links
Old Slave Mart Museum
- official website
Historic Charleston's Religious and Community Buildings, a National Park Service ''Discover Our Shared Heritage'' Travel Itinerary
Museum Grand Opening Press Release, October 2007
{{Commons category, Old Slave Mart
African-American history in Charleston, South Carolina
National Register of Historic Places in Charleston, South Carolina
Museums in Charleston, South Carolina
History museums in South Carolina
African-American museums in South Carolina
History of slavery in South Carolina
History of auctions
19th-century in Charleston, South Carolina
Slave pens