Lowcountry at High Tide: A History of Flooding, Drainage, and Reclamation in Charleston, South Carolina

By Christina Rae Butler

2020 George C. Rogers Jr. Award Finalist, best book of South Carolina history

A study of Charleston's topographic evolution, its history of flooding, and efforts to keep residents dry and safe

The signs are there: our coastal cities are increasingly susceptible to flooding as the climate changes. Charleston, South Carolina, is no exception, and is one of the American cities most vulnerable to rising sea levels. Lowcountry at High Tide is the first book to deal with the topographic evolution of Charleston, its history of flooding from the seventeenth century to the present, and the efforts made to keep its populace high and dry, as well as safe and healthy.

For centuries residents have made many attempts, both public and private, to manipulate the landscape of the low-lying peninsula on which Charleston sits, surrounded by wetlands, to maximize drainage, and thus buildable land and to facilitate sanitation. Christina Butler uses three hundred years of archival records to show not only the alterations to the landscape past and present, but also the impact those efforts have had on the residents at various socio-economic levels throughout its history.

Wide-ranging and thorough, Lowcountry at High Tide goes beyond the documentation of reclamation and filling and offers a look into the life and the history of Charleston and how its people have been affected by its unique environment, as well as examining the responses of the city over time to the needs of the populace. Butler considers interdisciplinary topics from engineering to public health, infrastructure to class struggle, and urban planning to civic responsibility in a study that is not only invaluable to the people of Charleston, but for any coastal city grappling with environmental change.

Illustrated with historical maps, plats, and photographs and organized chronologically and thematically within chapters, Lowcountry at High Tide offers a unique look at how Charleston has kept—and may continue to keep—the ocean at bay.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Release date: Jun 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781643360638

Book preview

Lowcountry at High Tide

Lowcountry at High Tide

A History of

FLOODING, DRAINAGE, AND RECLAMATION IN

Charleston, South Carolina

CHRISTINA RAE BUTLER

© 2020 University of South Carolina

Published by the University of South Carolina Press

Columbia, South Carolina 29208

www.uscpress.com

29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/.

ISBN 978-1-64336-062-1 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-64336-063-8 (ebook)

Front cover illustrations: Plan of a part of Charleston Neck …, 1807, courtesy of the South Carolina Historical Society; INSET: Bird’s Eye View of Charleston, S.C., 1851, courtesy of Historic Charleston Foundation Archives

For Nic

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Editorial Notes

Introduction

ONE

Colonial Charlestown

TWO

The Federal Era and the Incorporation of Charleston

THREE

Increased Activity and Antebellum Filling

FOUR

War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow: 1860 to 1900

FIVE

Early Twentieth-Century Progress

SIX

Between Two World Wars

SEVEN

Modern Charleston Emerges: World War II to the 1960s

EIGHT

Filling Activities Draw to a Close: 1960s to the Twenty-First Century

NINE

Implications of the Past, Current Issues, and Improvement Initiatives

Conclusion

Appendix 1: Report by City Engineer Louis Barbot to Mayor George Bryan Summarizing the Tidal Drain System Shortcomings, 20 August 1890

Appendix 2: Drainage and Sewerage Summary Letter, Gedney Howe to Alfred Halsey, 23 September 1950

Appendix 3: Timeline of Major Fill- and Drainage-Related Events

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe a debt of gratitude to my colleagues, friends, and family for their help and support on my long journey toward completing this book. W. Scott Poole at the College of Charleston served as a resource and adviser early on and has since become a supportive friend. Professor Kerry Taylor of the Citadel Military College and George Hopkins, professor emeritus at the College of Charleston, also read portions of my text and provided constructive feedback. Alex Moore gave guidance and editorial advice when I decided to expand my efforts into a book. Beth Phillips invited me to present illustrated lectures about my research to her history classes at College of Charleston, which helped me identify contextual elements to include.

The librarians and archivists of the South Carolina Room and Charleston Archive at Charleston County Public Library (especially Amanda Holling, Molly French, and Katie Gray), the South Carolina Historical Society (especially Virginia Ellison, Molly Siliman, and Celeste Wiley), Mary Jo Fairchild with the College of Charleston Special Collections, Karen Emmons with the Historic Charleston Foundation, Anna Smith with the Charleston Library Society, and Steve Tuttle of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History assisted immeasurably with my research and image requests over the years. Meg Moughan and Rebecca Schultz with Charleston City Records Management provided access and insight to historic city engineering records. Bob McIntyre of the Charleston County Register of Deeds provided beautiful scans from the McCrady plat collection for inclusion in the book. Former city engineer Laura Cabiness kindly provided an interview about current and future drainage projects taking place in the city.

Richard Brown, director of the University of South Carolina Press, believed in this project and helped see it through to completion in innumerable ways. He offered editorial advice, suggested source material, and gave moral support. Economist Bruce Fitzgerald read the manuscript and offered helpful advice in interpreting early tax structures. Wade Razzi was congratulatory, kind, and understanding when book deadlines diverted my attention away from extracurricular duties at the American College of the Building Arts. Charles Lesser, retired archivist for the South Carolina Department of Archives, offered insight into archival materials and abundant helpful advice over the years. Many other friends reassured me along the way that the project would be useful to them as historians, tour guides, or as residents seeking to learn about the city’s past, which encouraged me to complete the research and make it available as a publication.

I also wish to thank my parents, Dave and Rita Oberstar, for their unceasing encouragement and for fostering my love of history and the built environment from an early age. I have wonderful memories of visiting historic sites, watching This Old House, and reading anything related to history and buildings with them. As an adult I learned that my father’s favorite childhood book was Let’s Look under the City (1954), a pictorial exploration of subterranean infrastructure—it must run in the genes.

Most of all I am grateful to my husband, Nicholas Michael Butler, who has been an unceasing supporter and is a constant inspiration. His extensive knowledge of local source material and South Carolina history, and his editorial advice for the colonial chapter, was invaluable. Nic has been a patient and enthusiastic colleague, friend, and partner from the beginning stages of the project to its completion, and the book would not have been possible without him.

EDITORIAL NOTES

Lowcountry at High Tide utilizes primary sources in both typed and manuscript form, spanning more than three hundred years. The author has attempted to maintain a standard format for dates, monetary values, irregularities and misspellings, and name appearances in the written records. Individuals in the historic documents (especially civic) were often referred to by first and middle initials and last name. Every attempt has been made to identify individuals by their full first name. In the instances where given names could not be found, persons are referred to as they appear in the original document.

Some colonial and early federal-era newspapers have a single date, while others have a date range (South Carolina American General Gazette, 10–17 April 1769, for example). Dates are cited as they appear in the historical document. In general, quotes and transcriptions in this book duplicate the historic syntax, spelling, and emphasis used in the original document. Editorial modifications in [square brackets] are used where words either are missing or are so problematically spelled as to obscure meaning. Monetary amounts are cited in the currency and value in which they appear in the primary source documents. I have not converted them into 2020 currency because the data will quickly become irrelevant with the forward passage of time. One is able to compare figures of the era at hand to note spending preferences in relation to other projects and areas of the city at a given time period without conversion.

Introduction

Since settlers first established the city of Charleston, South Carolina, on a peninsula situated at the confluence of the Cooper and Ashley Rivers, inhabitants have manipulated its physical outline and topography in an attempt to transform the settlement from a marshy, flood-prone finger of land with numerous inlets and creeks into a well-drained and more uniformly shaped landmass. In the past 340 years, residents have greatly increased the usable landmass of the peninsula, a challenging endeavor in the face of environmental, economic, and social obstacles. This book documents the peninsula’s expansion, analyzes how the challenges to physical growth were overcome, and examines the implications of past filling activities for Charleston’s future. It addresses the history of drainage and landfill and the entwined political, social, and public health issues stemming from topographic challenges and change. A thorough history of fill and reclamation is overdue in a city in which flooding has been a continuous hindrance to human habitation since European settlers first recorded the phenomenon in the late seventeenth century.

Creating an exhaustive timeline of the civic departments and committees influential in civic improvements and compiling data of the exact area of dry acreage within the city limits over the centuries are outside the scope of this book, because the destruction or disappearance of many city records in 1865 precludes such work. Surviving records do, however, allow us to understand how and why the city grew over time, how the work of filling and drainage was undertaken, by and for whom, and they permit the documentation of large-scale projects throughout Charleston’s history. Specific civic bodies influential in filling are addressed where relevant to themes of the book.

The study of the chronology and methods of filling, draining, and land reclamation in Charleston yields more than just data for the city’s environmental history and built geography. It also provides important frameworks for understanding public health in the city’s past, and the municipal government’s evolving roles and responsibilities to its citizens in improving health and providing infrastructure. Analyzing historic filling activity provides new information for interpreting the city’s social history and for understanding how residents of different classes lived. The expansion of Charleston’s government to respond to infrastructural needs, to fund topographic and drainage improvements, and to meet civic responsibilities for preserving public health exemplifies the expensive and challenging modernization process that growing cities faced in early urban America. Motivations for topographic alterations changed over time and required the city to adjust its improvement plans and financing accordingly. Flooding, tidal erosion, and natural disasters including hurricanes were constant threats to the coastal community, and ones that motivated fill and drainage endeavors and triggered a municipal response to provide improvements and repairs. Concerns about health risks stemming from poorly drained areas, and the desire to create more high land for development and profit were also long-standing motives for altering the peninsula.

The chief instruments of topographic improvement discussed in Lowcountry at High Tide are publicly funded endeavors of land reclamation, filling, and drainage. Similar improvements made by private parties, though less well documented, also contributed to the overall growth of the peninsula. Selected examples of private improvements are thus included where they reveal conflicts between public and private interests endemic to public works and urban growth. The details of private fill campaigns also provide insight for publicly funded improvements, which often were constructed on top of small-scale, earlier private fill campaigns.

Land reclamation refers here to the creation of new buildable land, a topic most famously associated with the successful topographic improvements in the Netherlands and in Venice. In Charleston large-scale public reclamation projects were completed along the Cooper and Ashley riverbanks to increase the city’s dimensions. Retaining walls or bulkheads prevented fill from eroding from reclaimed areas along the rivers and marshes. One example is the early twentieth-century Murray Boulevard project, in which the city erected a seawall around a tidal mudflat, backfilled against it, and added forty-seven acres of high land on the southern and western edges of the peninsula. Wharves constructed along the Cooper River using pile or cobb (also called crib) construction (a log or timber box constructed in the river and filled with stone or other material) inadvertently led to gradual reclamation, as the docks between the wharves silted and were eventually filled above the waterline and developed, requiring construction of new wharves extending further into the river channels.¹

Filling refers to altering or raising lowlands or marshes within the existing geographic footprint of the peninsula. Examples include filling creeks, raising streets or low lots prone to flooding, and dumping fill material in marshlands until the land had sufficient elevation and stability to support buildings. This book addresses many civic improvements such as parks and marinas that residents created through reclamation and filling.

Drainage is a complex subject but is equally important in understanding the city’s growth, for without adequate drainage, it would have been impossible for residents to inhabit much of the city. Drains were constructed to carry storm, tidal, and occasionally wastewater off of the populated city’s surface. The Charleston City Council often undertook draining and filling simultaneously to render low-lying, flood-prone areas dry and sanitary. Lack of adequate drainage posed a substantial health risk before separate sewerage and storm drainage systems were installed; early drainage systems sometimes had the dual function of storm drains and sewer conduits. When drains did not function as desired, low-lying inhabited areas of the city flooded with water intermingled with sewage.

As American cities grew, so too did the volume and variety of waste for disposal. The growing volumes of refuse became fill material, an affordable but ineffective and unsanitary choice. The Charleston City Council struggled to provide expensive, modern public works such as drains, sewerage, waste collection, and water lines to a growing city. Extending service to the entire population was a decades-long process. While sewer lines were installed in affluent parts of the city beginning in the 1880s and water lines were introduced in the early 1900s, residents in poorer sections of the city continued using cisterns for water and relied on undersized drain trunks built in the early nineteenth century. In the decades following World War II, the outlying working-class neighborhoods of the city received modern amenities. Filling activities waned shortly after, as development interests moved away from the traditional heart of the city on the Charleston peninsula. The city’s aging infrastructure, however, is now taxed by increased flooding events and a surge of new infill development, and the town’s origins as a coastal settlement created from the marshes still creates challenges for residents today.

Setting and Context

Charleston is located within the coastal zone of South Carolina in the lowcountry region, so called because it lies near sea level and features marshes, tidal creeks, and swamps. The coastal zone extends inland about ten miles before giving way to the coastal plain, where the topography gradually rises and becomes more varied. The lowcountry is in a subtropical climate zone and averages forty-six inches of rain a year, although much of its precipitation occurs in short, intense bursts that create surface flooding. In the annual hurricane season from late spring to late fall, higher-than-average rainfalls are frequent.² Charleston’s street level is built on a mix of gray sands, organic fill material, and imported stone brought in as ship ballast, all atop a marl bed known as the Ashley Formation that descends for roughly two hundred feet.³ The topsoil is loose, having developed on former tidal marshes, beach ridges, dunes, and tidal plains.⁴

Factors that influence Charleston’s drainage efficacy and flooding potential include the range of the tides, volume of rainfall, land use changes, and the natural geography and elevation of the city. Average tides on the South Carolina coast range from 5.2 feet above mean sea level, to 6.8 feet during spring tides. The peninsula’s topography is low and slightly undulating, elevated an average of ten to twelve feet above sea level on most of the peninsula, and around five feet above sea level along stretches of the Cooper and Ashley riverbanks.⁵ The highest elevation on the peninsula is around twenty feet, while the lowest is at sea level. Meeting and King Streets, the city’s principal north-south thoroughfares, are atop a slight ridge running down the center of the peninsula. Their topography dips at the intersections of Market, Calhoun, and Line Streets, where tidal creeks and marshland once cut inland. From the central ridge, the peninsula’s topography slopes gradually toward the Cooper River on the east, and toward the Ashley River on the south and west.

Flooding has challenged inhabitants of the Charleston peninsula since the earliest days of English settlement, resulting from both natural and man-made factors. The peninsula’s coastline was originally irregular and indented with shallow tidal creeks that served as natural drainage conduits during normal rainfall. During heavy rain events, the vestiges of tidal creeks overflow their banks, and flash flooding occurs. As in New Orleans, early residents built on the high land first, then began to expand the town into the low-lying areas surrounding the original settlement. Filling marshes and creeks created new buildable land, but the organic fill used throughout the city has decomposed and gradually settled, leaving flood-prone depressions. Settling or subsidence, the physical process of land sinking, is exacerbated by inferior fill and by seismic activity. As the city developed and the population grew, urbanization and overdevelopment altered the natural drainage of the land, leaving ever fewer watercourses and permeable surfaces for water to pass through.⁶

Topography. South Carolina, Charleston Quadrangle. United States Geological Survey, Department of the Interior. R. B. Marshall, Chief Engineer. 1918. Courtesy of the University of Texas. The central ridge of the peninsula features of the highest elevations, with topography gradually sloping toward the Ashley and Cooper Rivers.

Charleston’s drainage challenges stem from the principles of hydraulics, or the way in which water flows into and through the channels, pipes, and inlets that carry it to its destination outside habited areas, or the outfall. Storm water—surplus precipitation that does not soak into the ground—flows (naturally or in a drainage system) toward an outfall. When it cannot reach an outfall, flooding occurs. The peninsula’s outfalls are the tidally influenced Cooper and Ashley Rivers, and the tributary tidal creeks and marshes that feed into the rivers.⁷ Gravity plays a significant role in how effectively a surface can shed storm water. The steeper the gradient, or pitch, that water flows down to reach an outfall (or the greater the distance that the water must fall to reach its destination), the faster and more effectively an area will drain. The total mechanical energy of gravity-induced water movement is called hydraulic head.⁸ Because Charleston lies close to sea level, there is little difference in elevation between the ground surface and the outfalls. Hence, water drains slowly from the relatively flat peninsula. The hydraulic head generated by water moving toward the outfalls is often insufficient to drain the streets during rainstorms. Low-lying developed areas experience surface ponding and backflow at high tide because the drains are already full of storm water or incoming tidal water from the rivers.⁹ Backflow diverters help prevent the tides from flowing into the drains, but drains are quickly filled to capacity from storm runoff. Flooding is exacerbated during high tides, when the water level is even closer to the street elevations.

Considering the natural and man-made challenges, there was no easy solution to the flooding difficulties in the past, which still persist today. City engineers have determined that adding larger drain lines alone would not increase the head of the storm water, and therefore would not be a viable fix for improving drainage.¹⁰ The city’s drains operate successfully most of time, except where they are undersized for the volume of storm water, or where they have settled, clogged, or lost their desired pitch. Settling causes pipe connections to fail, obstructing water flow. When a drain trunk is not pitched correctly to drain by gravity, surplus water works its way through the interconnected system and backs out into low-lying areas. Rework and repair to the drainage grid is ongoing.¹¹ Existing utilities below ground, and dense development above, prevent the addition of more grates for water to enter the drain system and make adding new lines challenging. All these issues, combined with settling fill and sea level that is several inches higher than it was a century ago, leave no wonder that flooding continues.¹²

Drainage and topographic challenges are as old as the city, and residents throughout Charleston’s history have tried numerous improvements to escape flooding. Residents filled and raised lots and streets where drainage alone was insufficient to allow development, and they appealed to the local government for assistance. The scale and motivation for topographic improvements, and response to growing improvement demands such as flood abatement, changed as Charleston’s political structure evolved. During the colonial era, Charlestown (as it was known prior to 1783) was an unincorporated town that served as the capital of South Carolina.¹³ The provincial legislature made laws to govern the entire colony and could not focus solely on the growing town’s needs. Instead of creating a municipal government, the legislature appointed commissioners tasked with such duties as collecting trash, erecting defensive fortifications, and maintaining the streets. The earliest commissions were ad hoc bodies appointed by the legislative body of South Carolina, the General Assembly. As the town’s population grew, standing commissions replaced earlier ad hoc bodies. Local commissioners exploited slave labor to construct causeways and roads to improve transportation but did not undertake planned filling projects for residential development during the colonial era. Such activities were left to private property owners who filled to create high, solid ground on which to construct their own houses, or as real estate investments.

As settlement on the peninsula expanded in every direction, tracts of lowlands and marsh were filled and developed, and the government incrementally extended infrastructure to meet demands in new neighborhoods. North of colonial Charlestown, encroaching Ashley and Cooper river tidal creeks created a narrow area that early residents called the Neck, which became a general term to describe the low suburban areas north of the town limits. The Neck’s geographic connotation shifted northward over time as residents filled and the town’s boundaries expanded. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Radcliffeborough on the west side of the peninsula north of Boundary (Calhoun) Street, and Wraggborough to the east were described as on the Neck, but by the twentieth century the Neck’s connotation had shifted north to the Magnolia Cemetery area three miles north of the original town.

The incorporation of Charleston in August 1783 was a significant event in the peninsula’s growth. The Incorporation Act established a municipal government with powers to impose city taxes, grant business licenses, regulate commerce, and manage collective civic enterprises and improvements. The nascent government was run by an elected, unsalaried City Council and part-time intendant (unpaid mayor). The City Council undertook reclamation projects, built drain lines, operated a scavenger department, regulated the waterfront, and responded directly to residents’ requests for improvements. Rather than employ a large workforce of salaried employees, the City Council (like the colonial government before it) hired projects out on a contract basis. An advertisement was placed to solicit bids, the offers were reviewed, and the government would select the best or cheapest bidder for the project. The city’s records reveal favored companies that received municipal contracts on a regular basis. For example the Horlbeck Brothers in the antebellum era and the Simons-Mayrant Company in the early twentieth century took the lion’s share of public works contracts.¹⁴ Both of these companies and many others that received municipal contracts had direct ties to the city government or had owners who served in some civic capacity.

Plan of a part of Charleston Neck lying to the northward of Boundary Street, by surveyor John Diamond, 1807. SCHS #32-47-10. Courtesy of the South Carolina Historical Society. A plan for a proposed canal on the original Charleston Neck shows marshes, creeks, and millponds in the vicinity of Boundary Street, which was the city limit until 1849. A bridge and causeway over Cannon’s Pond linked suburban Cannonborough and Harleston.

The city created boards and departments to oversee day-to-day operations and large-scale improvement plans, such as the Board of Health and the Commissioners of Streets and Lamps, which carried out filling for health risk abatement and transportation improvement, respectively. The City Council created numerous subcommittees to address civic needs when they arose. Some, such as the Board of Health, were standing committees, while others were ad hoc. The committees had power to hire individuals or companies to execute projects and carry out city maintenance.

Transforming the peninsula into a dry, healthy, modern city has been a painstaking, gradual process. In the past, slaves and free people of color worked alongside poor immigrants and other working-class whites to clean the city, provide day labor, construct buildings and roads, move earth, dig ditches, and perform myriad other tasks that made the low-lying city habitable. Surviving records provide detail about the work that enslaved people performed on behalf of the city. European immigrants labored on many early improvement projects in Charleston, but enslaved people of African descent formed the majority of the city’s population and dominated its labor force prior to 1865. The abundance of cheap labor discouraged the introduction of technological advancements or new machinery. Slave labor pervaded all aspects of the job market, from labor to skilled trades. Even antebellum city surveyor Charles Parker relied on Smart, an enslaved man who lived in a separate household, to assist with survey work, carpentry, and other needs that arose.¹⁵ After the Civil War, the city contracted with private companies who were now required to pay their workers a wage, but money was scarce for civic improvements.

Public records, residents’ complaints, and city directories reveal how and where the working-class and lower-middle-class majority of Charleston lived. High ground was the most desirable, the first to be settled, and the most expensive; many Charlestonians lived on the low-lying, filled lands that account for nearly half of the peninsula today. The laborers of Charleston (black and white, free and enslaved) often lived near the docks and mills where they worked, in tenements or simple wood frame houses they rented in flood-prone areas. Government agencies tried to fill, pave, and keep reclaimed residential areas clean and healthy, through public regulation, but their efforts were unsuccessful when they repeated fill and drainage endeavors that had failed in the past. Financial hardships often required them to postpone necessary improvement projects.

After incorporation public health became a principal civic motivation for filling and drainage. The Board of Health inspected low areas in the city that posed health risks and proposed remedies to the City Council. Medical theories about the causes of urban epidemics evolved over time, and the Board of Health kept abreast of new developments in the medical community. Whatever the rationales of the era, the board consistently called for low areas to be filled and raised, although their recommendations were often ignored in favor of cheaper measures. Health concerns diminished as Charleston modernized its infrastructure in the early twentieth century.

The desire to increase urban landmass for development, to foster business, and to beautify the city also motivated civic filling and reclamation. In the 1780s, for example, the City Council began embanking and filling a tidal mudflat along the Cooper River to continue East Bay Street southward from the original settlement. In the antebellum era, the City Council converted marshlands at the southern tip of the peninsula into a public park called White Point Garden. The city continued reclamation projects in the twentieth century to create new land for development, and to facilitate better transportation into the city. Private construction of the commercial wharves on the Cooper River was regulated and monitored by the state, the City Council, and the Chamber of Commerce.

Civic improvements spending had physical ramifications as well as social and political implications. Compared to other municipalities, Charleston’s government made less use of technology and took a fiscally conservative attitude toward reclamation projects and internal improvements. The city’s pace of growth often stalled as a result. By setting Charleston within the larger context of American urban history, the almost insurmountable costs associated with turning lowlands into a sanitary, dry city and providing modern infrastructure become evident. Despite the city’s best efforts to stay abreast of development and public health trends in urban centers across the nation, Charleston lagged behind, especially after the economic devastation of the American Civil War. Reconstruction-era financial conservativism increased in the late nineteenth century. While other cities took loans to add citywide drainage and sewerage programs, for example, Charleston opted for a pay-as-you-go approach that dragged improvement implementation out for decades. The City Council did sell municipal bonds for improvement projects (most often for railroad expansion) but used them sparingly.¹⁶

The City Council financed filling and drainage in a discriminatory manner based on class and race, undertaking improvements and reclamation campaigns in wealthy white residential sections first. It is not surprising that a government would spend more money in areas that generate the most tax revenue, but in Charleston this often meant neglecting residents who lived in areas with more urgent drainage and filling needs. City government favored affluent areas as a result of how improvement projects were financed, and the problem of how best to raise funds for civic improvement was not unique to Charleston. Tax historians and economists alike have criticized property tax systems of the past precisely because of the discriminatory results for working-class areas.¹⁷

Civic services offered by colonial governments were few compared to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so revenues from colony-wide property tax, poll taxes, and customs duties were sufficient for government operation.¹⁸ The South Carolina colonial government and the early City of Charleston funded public works such as paving and drainage by assessing only the residents who would benefit from the proposed improvement. This system of raising taxes based on the assessed value of real estate is known as ad valorem taxation, which became increasingly popular as urban areas created local governing bodies in the late eighteenth century. Proponents believed it to be a more uniform system of taxation that would eliminate discriminatory practices.¹⁹ In reality ad valorem taxation had many deficiencies, including arbitrary assessment procedures, complicated tax brackets and rate systems, and ill-articulated exemptions.²⁰

The Charleston City Council funded the municipal treasury, which was mainly used for public relief programs and city operating expenses, by imposing license fees and property taxes, but it used ad valorem taxation for most improvements. Under early ad valorem practices, relatively few residents (those who would benefit from a project) were assessed the whole cost of proposed projects.²¹ These tax collection practices created class disparity in improvement spending because assessments raised in areas with low real estate values were often insufficient to finance desired work. Low-lying, working-class areas suffered severe flooding and high disease rates associated with stagnant water, lack of sewerage, and drinking water contamination. Board of Health physicians produced reports about causes and preventative measures for yellow fever, cholera, and other epidemics that disproportionately plagued poor residents in low areas, but in lower-income areas where assessments might not cover the cost of improvements, proposed projects were postponed or tabled indefinitely.

Charlestonians often resisted assessments because of financial hardships or the belief that improvements were unnecessary. There are numerous examples before and after incorporation of owners wishing to reduce their assessment bills. Despite the flaws in the tax system, localized assessments remained the most popular mode of funding for early municipalities, including Charleston. They provided local governments with political expediency for desired projects, by allowing them to allot money directly instead of depositing it in a general treasury and then redistributing it.²² The need for a fair and effective assessment method grew as cities expanded and modern infrastructure became de rigueur. Perhaps the largest strain on city finances, resulting in large assessments for residents, came during the mid- to late nineteenth century, when cities began to add better drainage, public water, and sewerage services.²³

High-profile projects and those that would benefit a large portion of residents might be financed by the general treasury. Whether to proceed with or defer projects was determined by availability of finances. Instances in which projects became politicized are discussed in this book. Politicians justified capital projects in high-end areas by arguing that they were for the greater good of the city because the improvements increased tax revenue and livability, and bolstered tourism and business. For example the City Council financed the creation of White Point Garden as a showplace to draw new residents, while other areas lacked the most basic drainage improvements. The question of what was for the common good, and what was locally advantageous for wealthy politicians, was complex and subjective.

In the mid-nineteenth century, municipal bonds became a popular mode for financing large infrastructural improvements. In the decades after the Civil War, Charleston issued bonds for sewerage and drainage projects and other public works, and the city continues to utilize bonds today.²⁴ Modern taxation practices reflect the civic consciousness that pervaded municipal leadership by the late nineteenth century. Currently Charleston, like most cities, taxes properties based on a certain millage or percentage of the property’s value.²⁵ Revenue is placed in a general fund, from which the government finances annual budgets, pays staff, and funds necessary improvements. The obvious benefit is that residents in one area are not required to provide the entire cost of an improvement project at the time of construction. When a low-income area needs paving or drainage, the cost is taken from a larger citywide pool to which every owner pays a fair percentage based on the value of their property.

Sources and Organization

A comprehensive history of topographic improvements in Charleston seems overdue in a city plagued by hydrological issues since its settlement. The challenges of compiling such a study stem from a paucity of documentary materials from the early years, followed by a surfeit of records after 1865. Several campaigns addressed in this book might warrant small books unto themselves—the High Battery, White Point Garden, the Boulevard project, and Colonial Lake especially. The scope of the present volume does not permit an exhaustive discussion but rather serves as a framework to facilitate future in-depth studies of each of those projects.

For the colonial period, extant legislative records such as the journals of the provincial assembly, commissioners’ reports, and statutes provide details of public works, which are found published in historic newspapers and in manuscript form at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. Following the incorporation of Charleston in 1783, the City Council created records of its own proceedings, committee reports, expenditure bills, and ordinances, but much of this material was lost during the Civil War, thus obscuring our understanding of the city’s early work. The city began regularly publishing the official proceedings of City Council meetings in local newspapers in 1836, which fills in some of the missing documentation for earlier activities. Most city records created after 1865 are extant.

The City Council minutes and the records of related entities such as the Commissioners of Streets and Lamps and the Board of Health demonstrate the political, class, and economic issues that influenced filling, drainage, and improvement spending, and the changing motivations for topographic improvements.²⁶ Surviving records include citizen petitions on a great variety of improvement-related issues. Some residents asked that the city undertake improvements, while others sought to be relieved from assessments needed to pay for improvements. City records provide the names of residents affected by civic projects and the private companies contracted to do work for the city. Maps, plats, and photographs offer visual resources for understanding alterations of the Charleston peninsula over time. Many of the plats used in this book are drawn from the private collection of John McCrady, now housed at the Charleston County Register of Deeds, and from the City of Charleston Plat Book at the Charleston County Public Library’s Charleston Archive.

This book is organized into chronological chapters, which are further broken into thematic sections. Chapter 1 discusses filling in the colonial era, followed by a discussion of incorporation in 1783 and the early federal period, when public filling activities increased. Chapter 3 begins in 1836, the year marking regular publication of council proceedings in the newspapers. The abundance of extant source material beginning in 1836 allows for more in-depth analysis of class issues inherent in the city’s choices of filling locations and materials. Chapter 4 begins with the conclusion of the American Civil War, which brought a prolonged period of financial straits. Chapter 5 examines the turn of the twentieth century, during improved economic times with the development of the Charleston Naval Base. Though not located on the Charleston peninsula, the base brought new economic opportunities, population growth for Charleston, and a return to public filling projects. Chapter 6 covers the period from 1920 to the onset of World War II, including technological advances following World War I and the financial hardships of the Great Depression that characterized most of the interwar period. Chapter 7 addresses World War II to 1965. Chapter 8 analyzes the decline in filling and projects undertaken since the 1960s, by which time most of the creeks and lowlands south of the city limits at Mount Pleasant Street had been eradicated through gradual infilling. Later federal wetlands protection laws placed limits on opportunities to reclaim marshlands on the margins of the city.

The final chapter examines the drainage and filling issues plaguing Charleston today. The city continues to grow by annexing contiguous areas, rather than through reclamation on the edges of the peninsula. Annexation is often the first step toward new development, and future filling activities will likely be off the peninsula or on existing settling made land that will require infrastructural upgrades. Although the geographic area of the peninsula has grown little in recent decades, Charleston’s municipal government continues to work to make the city more livable, safer, and dry at high water. These challenges have never been more daunting than they are today in the face of global climate change and rising sea levels, but an understanding of the efforts, successes, and failures of the past are informative for future endeavors.

ONE

Colonial Charlestown

English settlers arrived on the South Carolina coast in 1670 to establish the first permanent European settlement in the new proprietary colony of Carolina. King Charles II granted Carolina to eight Lords Proprietors in 1663, in return for their support in aiding him in his restoration to the throne in England. The Lords Proprietors operated the colony as an overseas investment, and most never traveled to Carolina. English colonists, either directly or by way of Barbados and other English colonies, settled Carolina, along with a minority of French and other Europeans, and a contingent of African slaves. The nascent colony had limited economic success with the exportation of deerskins, beef, and forest products.

The first English settlement was situated at Albemarle Point on the west bank of the Ashley River, several miles inland from the coast. Within two years of arrival, the settlers wrote to the Lords Proprietors in England to suggest that the settlement be moved to the Charleston peninsula at the confluence of the Cooper and Ashley Rivers.¹ The Lords Proprietors later concurred, and the seat of government was officially moved in 1680. The new site provided better access to the Atlantic Ocean for shipping and, being surrounding by water, was more easily defended. Although the new town site included some high land along the Cooper River, most of the peninsula was low lying. Residents immediately began to alter the topography in their new town.

By the turn of the eighteenth century, settlers found that rice was a marketable cash crop well suited to the climate and soil of the lowcountry. The establishment of rice as the main staple of the Carolina economy solidified an elite planter class who dominated colonial politics. The cultivation of rice also led to large importations of Africans as slaves to the colony, brought forcibly to work on the plantations, and to perform other labor and skilled trades. By 1708 enslaved laborers constituted the majority of South Carolina’s population and would remain the largest demographic