83/85 S. Market Street
Copyright 2009 David A. Farrow
All Rights Reserved
If one were to amble down South Market Street in the late summer of the year 2009, one would likely be sauntering down that street with an eclectic mix of humanity. Walking east from Meeting to Church Streets, one would encounter prototypical American families from Ohio clad in Old Navy buying tickets for a carriage tour in the parking lot of a bank. Striding purposely past them would be a family from Georgia suffused with walking and touring and ready to hop the bus back to the Visitors Center.
Women who have no earthly right to so do wear terry cloth shorts and glare at healthy young College of Charleston girls power walking past them. Hucksters trying to sell everything from plastic pinwheels to serious attempts at art, would smile sincerely or eye you with ennui. As one passes the bus caught in traffic exacerbated by beer delivery trucks, one would pass a few eateries. Three have been around for twenty years and longer.
If one were to enter the building at 83/85 Market, a sense of history unbidden might arise unknown. Thousands of individual stories could be told about this place, many sordid.
In order to understand these stories, however, one would do well to start at the beginning.
If a person were to be in the exact spot described above in 1700, one would be in a small wooden boat at high tide. That time of year, the shrimp would be crackling in the creek. The smell of pluff mud would assault your European or African senses. As you looked directly south of you, you would see the Grand Modell of the city being laid out in front of you. The Charleston wall, which ran four blocks east-west and eight blocks north-south, would be in the early stages of construction. If you were an adult, chances are you’d arrived on this alien shore within the last twenty years.
Ten years later, drifting along that same creek with the tide, the wall would dominate the southern vista. In the winter, the creek would get very little sunlight as the wall would block much of it as a moat to a castle. In the fall, the sunlight would make the creek seem afire with its descendancy in a straight line west to east.
Twenty years later, your son or your grandson would be walking down a causeway, a narrow lane through the marsh next to a canal that led to a square. Five years after that, more of the area would be filled in by the Colleton family.
For 30 years, this author has maintained that the remnants of the city wall were used to fill in Daniel’s Creek while being rebuffed by experts. Still, logic dictates that this assertion be at least mentioned. Daniel’s Creek was enormous. It ran from what is today East Bay to King Street. The marsh extended to the south to where Cumberland Street is today northward to Hasell Street with spits of land jutting out haphazardly through the marsh. The wall came down roughly the same time as the creek was filled in. There is only one question to pose. Where is the wall? What happened to it? Why is there no trace of it on the northern end? I maintain that the wall filled in the creek. My reasoning is that the creek disappeared the same time as the wall; there’s no trace of the wall. Where is it?
That’s what originally filled in Daniel’s Creek. That’s this author’s story and he’s sticking to it.
Nonetheless, the filling in of Daniel’s Creek was but the beginning of the tale.
Jonathan Poston writes in The Buildings of Charleston A Guide to the City’s Architecture (University of South Carolina Press, 1998) that, “The city’s market area of the nineteenth century lay east of King Street in what became the epicenter of the antebellum city. As the city’s walls were removed in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, new Church Street reached beyond St. Philip’s Church by crossing over a creek via “Governor’s Bridge” to lot no. 80 of the Grand Modell, granted to the original proprietor’s son, Sir Peter Colleton, and adjacent lots that were granted to other members of his family. These parcels came to be known as Colleton Square. The third generation of Colletons sold the property in 1738 to three prominent citizens including Charles Pinckney, who built his Mansion House on the best site in 1746. The Pinckney family later gave the whole of present day Market Street, which was built on filled in marsh, to the city with a reversion clause that continues to the present day.
“The Market Hall, designed by Edward Brickell White was built in 1841. The city market sheds stretch 1,240 feet in length today but originally reached on the other side of East Bay Street to the harbor. Several sections have been rebuilt following earthquake, hurricane and tornado damage. The street still prolongs itself to a dock and passenger terminal adjacent to the imposing Custom House designed by Ammi B. Young.
“From the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, the market area contained a varied mix of commercial uses. As the city’s “Tenderloin” district, it was lined with tattoo parlors and speakeasies, or “Blind Tigers” during Prohibition. These contrasted sharply with a sailor’s chapel on the northwest corner of North Market and East Bay streets that was given to the city by the Pinckney family. The area also had an industrial impulse as home to ships’ chandlers, sea food packing warehouses, wholesale grocers, and a carriage factory. The tumble-down character of the area, accentuated by damage in a tornado in 1938, made it a thorn in the city’s side by the 1960s. Eventually “gentrification” in the form of renovations for bars, restaurants, inns, and shops, primarily geared for Charleston’s tourist economy, took over, and while old buildings were rehabilitated, new infill structures were added to the once localized landscape”.
An article that appeared in the Charleston News and Courier in March of 1939 remarks that, “The market has undergone extensive repairs more than once since it was first erected on its present site some time between 1790 and 1806. Though antedated by a beef market, which stood from early days almost where the City Hall is now and by a fish market established in 1770 on an East Bay water lot opposite the end of Queen Street, the present institution seems to have been the first general market in Charleston.
“It stands on made ground where formerly a creek ran. By 1788, this had been reduced to a narrow canal which stretched through privately owned land from the Cooper River as far as Church Street.
“On March 29, 1788, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Deas, Thomas Jones, Sims White, John Wyatt and Mary Lingard gave an indenture by which they allowed the city council to lay out a street 100 feet wide through their land, from Meeting Street to the Cooper, and to build a public market or markets therein. The buildings were not to be put up for two years, but once there, were to remain. A plat annexed to the deed shows the canal crossed East Bay (then Bay Street) by the “Governor’s Bridge” and the three projected buildings.
“The westernmost, for beef, was to be 200 feet in length, and to lack 100 feet to Meeting Street, the space now occupied by the market hall remained vacant. Back of this building was to stand the “Country Market”, 150 feet long. Beyond the bridge, on a site northwest of the present Custom House, the fish market was planned.
“Built on the land thus generously given, the market was soon in a flourishing condition. In 1807, an elaborate ordinance was passed, prescribing minute regulations for its use, and other ordinances followed. The opening and closing doors were announced by a bell. Dogs which guarded the butchers’ carts had to be tied or under the vehicles coming through the city and were not allowed in the market. Stocks were provided in which slaves who broke the rules were placed; white persons and free colored persons were fined. Later, we hear of a public whipping post where criminals of both races were punished.”
A column entitled “Do You Know Your Charleston” which ran in the September 28, 1959 in the News and Courier, further explains, “Times have changed since a codification of market regulations was adopted by City Council on May 6, 1807.
“Any article offered for sale then by a slave on Sunday was to be seized and taken to the poor house or the orphan house. Any city officer who refused to discharge this duty was to be fined $50, and any member of the City Guard who refused ‘shall be dismissed.’
“For selling unsound meat or stale provisions, a freed man was to be fined $20 and a slave was to be placed in stocks on Market Street and receive between 10 and 20 lashes from the market clerk. The slave’s punishment could be averted by a payment of a fine by his owner.
“Persons selling beef or any other meat of vegetables elsewhere but in the market were to be punished according to the same provisions as selling unsound meat.
“Selling hours were established as between sunrise and 11 a.m. June 1 to Sept. 30, and until noon Oct. 1 to May 31. Sales were prohibited on Sunday.”
The 1939 article goes on to say, “Several visitors to Charleston in the 1820s have left descriptions of the market, one of these being that of Peter Neilson in his “Recollections of a Six Year Residence in the United States.” A Scot, Neilson made note of the prices which he found high, stating that, “No article whatever can be purchased for less than 6 1/4 cents,” but he also noticed the quantities of West Indian fruits, “the excellent potatoes raised near Charleston in spring”, the plentiful game, and the politeness of the Negroes to each other. In summer, he found, fish were usually sold live.
“Early rising was then the rule, and most people had their marketing done as early as from 5 to 7 o’clock in the morning. It is not surprising to read, after this, that ladies took afternoon naps. Like most visitors, Nelson commented on the turkey buzzards which acted like scavengers and repeated the generally credited (but mistaken) belief that they were protected by law.
“A local viewpoint is expressed in an editorial in The Courier of 1822. This speaks of the two rows of wagons marshaled in the space where the market hall now stands, one line containing peaches and the other, poultry. A dollar purchased four or five fowls, but one had to take them as they came. ‘If you wish to get all hens, have a friend on the other side to push the hens with a stick to your side — your wife will thank you if the countryman does not.’ As for vegetables, there were none better in the United States.
“At that date, the principal building was the beef market, made of brick, with a second story and a conical roof, on the center of which was a cupola, surmounted by a clock. On the upper floor the commissioners of the market met, annually devoured an “Epicurean repast.”
“Due to a series of calamities in the 1830s, it can only be hoped that any of these early market buildings remain. Fire destroyed the part given over to small meat in February, 1833. The work of rebuilding was divided among several contractors and finished by December. Unlike the tile roofing of the present sheds, the covering used was zinc.
“Some months later, in August 1834, the market had a foretaste of the disaster of 1838, being struck by a tornado, which wrecked another portion. This fortunately happened at night when the place was deserted. Again the gap was filled, the specifications this time calling for tile or slate roofs. But in 1835, the beef market was burned.
“In no wise discouraged, the commissioners ordered improvements. Two buildings were erected in 1837 at the end of the fish market, one for weights and scales, and the other for cattle. Meanwhile, the Masons had secured permission to build a handsome hall at the Meeting street end. The plans called for the lower story to be part of the market, while a ballroom and Mason’s hall were to occupy the second and third floors. The cornerstone was laid on August 23.
“The hall was nearly finished when the great fire of April 27, 1838, swept it away, leaving only the arches standing. Over 120,000 bricks were saved from its ruins. The Masons decided not to rebuild there, but gave up their right to the location. Instead, the city erected the market hall, which still stands, and now houses the collection of relics belonging to the Daughters of the Confederacy. This dignified building was begun in June, 1840, and finished by July, 1841.
“The bull’s heads on the frieze, which are among the Doric order, are singularly appropriate for a market.
“In the next few years, both the fish market and oyster shells caught fire, but were saved. It is interesting to learn that the roof of the former was painted with Spanish brown, the color used many years before, in a room of the Heyward Washington House.
“A trace of humanitarianism entered the regulations in 1848 when it was provided that poultry should not have their legs bound, but must be placed in coops which had lath on at least two sides. The cruel binding of fowl’s legs is too often practiced at the present day. In 1844, calves, sheep and lambs were similarly protected, it being ordered that their feet remain united.
“The market continued to thrive until the bombardment of 1863 put an end for a time to its trade. Two persons, Miss Plane and Mr. William Knighton were wounded by shellfire at Meeting and Market Streets, and died in a few days.
“After the war, in spite of changed conditions, the market saw a return of activity which lasted into this century. Wild turkeys, wild duck, rice birds, and quarters of deer were on sale. One stall, Noissettes’, was filled with flowers and strawberries in season. A large bunch of roses tightly tied in a French bouquet, edged with stiff foliage cost a quarter. Piles of melons overflowed among bundles of lightwood on the pavement.
“More recently, since the sale of meat has been permitted at other places throughout the city, trade in the market has declined and in later years, much of it has been empty. A “back to the market” movement in 1922 could do little. But the practice of letting the farmers sell their goods, free of charge, early in the morning under the two sheds nearest East Bay brought back animation, even if it produced no revenue for the city.”
After the disasters — the tornado and fire of the 1830s and the merciless shelling of the war the remnants of a civilization was sold in the bombed out ruins and another rose. Vincent Chicco found a way to sell liquor and, his son, another valued commodity at 85 Market Street. The guidebook for tour guides published by the city of Charleston states that according to unpublished notes written by Robert Stockton, “85 Market Street was the site of Chiccos cafe. Vincent Chicco, the ‘King of the Blind Tigers,’ had his headquarters in a building previously on this site. Chicco led the fight locally against prohibition. He became a local hero and was elected repeatedly to City Council.”
Vincent Chicco came to Charleston as a result of a shipwreck after the War Between the States. His business sense of providing people with what they wanted provided Chicco with more than his share of the American Dream.
Charleston, Charleston!: The History of a Southern City by Walter J. Fraser (USC Press 1989) avers, “Governor Tillman’s Dispensary system, a statewide liquor monopoly that went into effect on July 1, 1893, was intended to close down forever all saloons and liquor wholesalers and restrict the retail sale of alcoholic beverages to state-operated dispensaries. Charlestonians, who for generations had enjoyed beer, wine, rum and whiskey in congenial public bars and restaurants, were shocked and they simply ignored the law. Illegal bars, called “blind tigers,” sprang up around the city, and prominent citizens engaged in illegal liquor traffic. Governor Tillman spoke of “raising hell on Chicco Street,” referring to the notorious bootlegger and member of City Council. Vincent Chicco, Mayor Ficken and Chief Martin cooperated with Tillman in repeated, ingenious, hard nosed, but futile attempts to enforce the law, which contributed to the defeat of the Ficken administration in the next municipal election.” (Pages 325-326)
Fraser asserts further that, “Mayor Grace like Mayor Rhett made only a gesture of enforcing the state Dispensary law. Periodic fines of the hundreds of operators continued to provide a steady source of income for the city’s usually empty treasury. Of far greater threats to the “blind tigers” were the raids of state agents, who therefore had to be paid protection money, estimated to be as much as $50,000 monthly. Only under pressure from the governor did Charleston’s mayors approve police raids, but usually “just for the record.” Both Mayors Rhett and Grace believed that the “blind tigers” were “too much a part of the web of life” in Charleston to close them down. The well-known Vincent Chicco, “the state’s most notorious liquor dealer,” who was a close friend of Mayor Grace, served on City Council for four consecutive terms and sat on a grand jury investigating local liquor violations. Another prosperous bootlegger was W.J. Cantwell, the brother of Charleston’s chief of police.” (Pages 356-357)
This went on for years and passed from father to son.
Blind tigers went on until the thirties and actually into the 1970s.
A word on blind tigers and Governor Tillman’s dispensary system: You may notice that when one buys a cocktail in the state of South Carolina, it is often poured from a mini-bottle, a container one might find on an airplane. The reason goes back to the beginning of the colony.
Before the Revolution, the English who were primarily affiliated with the Church of England, established and ruled the colony which in the early days was composed of the coastal regions. While John Locke’s Fundamental Constitution called for absolute religious freedom, St. Philips was granted a state charter in 1710. Nothing ever really came of it, religious freedom held sway. The Huguenots, French Protestants, soon intermarried with the English. It was a good plan, for, by and large, the English had the power and the French had the money.
As the century wore on, the Scotch-Irish immigrated and gravitated to the northwestern part of the state. Compared to the planter class, theirs was a mean existence. Not only was there resentment towards the Lowcountry in a regional sense, however. The freedom to worship and the large population of Baptists who had been persecuted in England sprouted a fierce fundamentalism whose traces can be ascertained to this day.
This displeasure led from the capital being moved from Charleston to the middle of the state in the 1780s. The upstate owned very few slaves, and while they weren’t necessarily against the peculiar institution, they couldn’t afford it. Thus it was that they were not keen on secession.
The rancor grew after the disaster of the war, and when Ben Tillman rode into power with a populist theme, he did every thing he could do to hurt Charleston.
One of those devices was the abolition of liquor by the drink. Charleston has always catered to seafarers. Those who are away for long periods at sea, tend to want to unwind a bit.
Unwind they did, in a spectacular way.
Ben Tillman saw Charleston as Sodom and Gomorra. He thought it was his charge to turn it into a pillar of salt. In addition to taxes on shipping, he outlawed drinking establishments.
Charleston paid about as much attention to his dispensary system as a cat would to an umbrella. Blind tigers were set up. In the 1890s, there were many establishments that charged admission to see the blind tiger in the back room. Of course, there was no such thing in the establishment, but since the customer had already paid, he got a few drinks on the house.
This continued until the 1970s, even after the repeal of the Volstead Act of 1933. 83/85 South Market, which is, even today, owned by the Chicco descendants, was then turned into a house of ill-repute in the 1930s.
This was not such a stretch. Liquor by the drink was still illegal in South Carolina. Why not add fuel to the fire?
It’s interesting to note that blind tigers continued until the ‘70s. When this author was coming of age, there were still many establishments that served up vices such as illegal liquor by the drink, prostitution and gambling. One easily recalled scenario was at the Five O’clock Club at the corner of Concord and Cumberland Streets. In 1970, one could go in there, despite one’s tender age of 17. When one sat at the garishly-lit bar, one could order a drink poured out of a quart bottle, watch a strip show and have an expensive conversation with a comely bare-breasted young thing. If one bored of this, one could go to the back room and play blackjack for serious money. The game while not rigged in the usual sense was certainly tilted in the house’s favor as the dealer was also comely and scantily-clad.
The local authorities were loathe to close all this down for 80 years. The state wanted to sell liquor by the drink, but those in the upstate gainsaid these efforts. Finally, the compromise of the mini-bottle was reached, but boot-legging in the city went on until the 1980s.
The whorehouse was owned by Chicco’s son. According to the late Burneston Baker, “It was a whorehouse in the 1930s. It was called 85 Market Street. It was gone by W.W.II. There was a bar downstairs and a whorehouse upstairs.”
The city directories of the 1930s list the occupant of 85 Market as Wilmar Blair.
According to the late J. Douglas Donehue, “That area was a red light district. It died out in the 50s. You did not want to be in that area after dark unless you were with a friend. At that time the Navy had moved north, and the main customers were merchant sailors.
“The most notorious madam in Charleston was a woman named Kitty Blair. She held forth on West Street which was sanctioned by the Navy. Sanctioned doctors used to inspect the girls. The Navy presence made the town into a pretty good liberty port because there was an upper-class, a middle class, and lower class of white people.
“Kitty Blair had the best looking girls and the cleanest house. She was the premiere Madame of her day and she was a friend of the admirals and the captains and all these people who had the power to keep these people out of there if they wanted to. There were stories about her being a graduate of Mount Holyoke. She came here with an eye to making money. To my knowledge, she was never married. I heard she was not an unattractive woman, but she was an older woman. in her late 40s or early 50s. She was a hell of a business woman, because she was the top-dog Madame in Charleston. If she were that well known, that even I as a child knew about her, that had to say something. You mentioned the name “Kitty Blair” and everyone knew who you were talking about.”
Chances are Kitty and Wilmar were one and the same.
One must understand that, even in the 1970s and early ‘80s, black prostitution flourished in the areas around Archdale, Fulton and Clifford streets. West Street was the city’s anchor to prostitution for 60 years.
This author gave a “Ladies of the Evening Tour” for five years and picked up a lot of stories and information.
One interesting story is that like his predecessors, Mayor Burnett Rhett Maybank found the city’s coffers deeply in the red during the Great Depression. His solution was to raid the blind tigers and whore houses once a month whereby the fine was paid and no one carted off to jail. Not only did this put the city’s fiduciary standing in very good stead within four years, but continued the tradition of bag men until the 1970s.
Another story told on that tour was of a merchant seaman who came to Charleston every year and was particularly enamored of a girl in local cat house. Every time he came to port, he wouldn’t even cruise Market Street for a couple of pops. He went straight to see the object of his lust and imagination.
One year, he came to Charleston and dashed to the house to see the girl, where he was crestfallen to find she had already been booked up for the night.
“John, since you’re such a valued customer,” offered the madam, “and I know Doreen would love to see you, why don’t you help yourself to the cigars and liquor, and when she’s finished, you two can have a little visit?”
The whore house was in one of the myriad single houses that make up the prevalent architecture of Charleston. A Charleston single house is a building that is one room wide, the porches face south and the door opens on the porch. Single houses are perfect for use as houses of ill-repute for egress and ingress to the house can be strictly monitored and controlled.
Sitting up on the second-floor hallway awaiting Doreen, John sulked. The more he drank, the gloomier his mien. Glancing out the window, he saw the roof of the porch, As he helped himself to the liquor, he noticed a pile of used mattresses in a dark corner of the hallway.
When Doreen came out to greet him, the merchant seaman tossed the mattresses and the girl out of the window onto the roof of the side porch. He climbed out in the same movement, and, overcome by want and desire, the two of them began rutting like farm animals. So intent were they in the ecstasy of passion, that they didn’t realize that a forwards and backwards motion also engendered a back and forth rolling motion.
They rolled off the porch and fell to the ground, still so encumbered. The fall rendered them both unconscious, but still intertwined.
A drunk passed by the house, and chanced to glance in the driveway where his eyes lit upon the couple.
Frantically, he banged on porch door until the madam came.
“What do you want?” she inquired with an air of disapproval.
“Idd’n thish a whorehouse?” he asked.
Imperiously, the madam answered, “Yes, what of it, you sot?”
“”Gee lady, you don’t have to get rude,” the drunk replied, “I just wanted to tell you that your sign fell down.”
In late September of 1938, another catastrophe struck.
Imagine for a moment being a merchant seaman who has paid for an entire evening at 85 Market. It’s been a long night; honor and offer, proffered and accepted. Suddenly awake and alarmed, that seaman rushes to the window where he can see other side of the market. It sounds like a freight train from hell is barreling down right upon him. Before he can leave the room, the northern side of the market building explodes and evaporates.
At roughly 8 a.m. on the morning of September 29, six tornadoes touched down on Charleston, S.C. like nature’s storm troopers. One of them damaged St. Michael’s Church. Another ripped through northern side of the market, destroying everything in its path. When that tornado got to East Bay Street, it veered a bit and took the river side market building apart and lifted it, carrying it in the harbor and out to sea. The loss of life was substantial as the hapless victims, buyers and sellers, were swept away.
As with every disaster the market had seen before, the living emerged from the wreckage to rebuild.
Business had to be slow at 85 Market for Kitty Blair after the tornado. Chances are she ventured back to her home base on West Street.
Up until modern times, the market belonged to the sellers. Superstores had yet to appear in a developer’s eye. The market was the life blood of the dinner table. The city wasted no time in rebuilding it.
By March of 1939, The News and Courier reported that, “The old market will be ready to reopen by May 1, according to present indications, and no one will be better pleased than the colored vegetable sellers, who are now doing business temporarily in President street by Burke industrial high school.
“A tin shed containing twelve stalls, built on the playground shelters them during rain, but otherwise they sit along the sidewalks and display their wares on overturned crates. Trade, they admit, is generally good, but they complain of the dust and long for the old stand.
“Severely damaged by the tornado of September 29, which demolished the easternmost shed with a heavy loss of life, the market is being restored with WPA funds. Old bricks are being used to keep the texture uniform, but the tiles, red underneath and covered by a black protective glaze on top, are new, though copied from the old models. The bricks are being laid in Flemish Bond, which is found throughout the old construction except in a few pillars between Meeting and Church streets, where English bond was used…
“Three of the four sections have been virtually completed.
“The remaining section is the longest and contains three parts — two sheds, one supported by pillars and the other by arches, and the market hall, on which last considerable work has been done
“To Charlestonian and stranger alike, the market is a piece of local history. To the WPA, it is the scene of work under the project 3910, sponsored by the city of Charleston. But to the vegetable sellers strung out along the sidewalks of President Street, it is a second home, and they are anxious to return.”
The vegetable sellers returned, but the modern supermarket and refrigeration began to encroach on those vendors. North Market Street was rebuilt and South Market got a makeover. Car dealerships began to take over.
The city of Charleston was at a loss during this period. After the Second World War, the market, itself was having a rough go of it. It is important to remember that the city was legally obligated to keep the market as a going concern or risk having to return the land to the Pinckney heirs who were (and still are) innumerable.
In January of 1946, an article appeared in The News and Courier with the headline, “City Market Becoming Center of Activity.”
The article stated, “New life is returning to an old landmark, the Charleston City Market, where four additional stalls are open and two others are in the process of construction.
“A year and a half ago, the old market appeared to have little chance of a comeback. Long in a state of economic dry-rot, it was fast becoming a mere monument of bygone days. Instead of the food center it was meant to be and was for more than a century. Just before World War I, the market was still a going concern, thronged each week day by house wives and an eager chattering crowd of Negro sellers. There were also white merchants, mainly butchers, who had maintained their stalls for years. Flying overhead, or stalking arrogantly through the traffic in search of offal were the famous buzzards, popularly believed to be protected by city ordinance, although no such law existed.
“With changing conditions, business drifted elsewhere. The market was at a low ebb when the tornado of 1938 which wrought havoc there brought further discouragement. A year and a half ago, only four stalls were left.
“These were a vegetable stand, run by Eloise Barron; two soft-drink stands run by Chris Thomas, and another soft-drink stand, Zara’s variety-nook, generally known as Gaillard’s.
“The rebirth began with the opening of the bus dispatcher’s office, built by the South Carolina Power company, the market being the city terminus for several of their bus routes. Next came the newsstand operated by T.W. Dunning, which also opened in the summer of 1944.
“By far the largest stall, that of The Butcher Boy, began business at the end of October this year. Operated by Herman Arbinet, who was brought up in Charleston, it smokes meat in addition to selling it. At present the management is looking for additional showcases and machinery to make frankfurters and other foods.
“An interesting business is that run by Mrs. Maggie Boone, who sells fresh-ground grist. Mrs. Boone told a reporter yesterday that she grinds the corn every day in her stall at the market. She is a native of North Dakota.
“ ‘I certainly came a long way to grind a little corn,’ she said cheerily. Almost completed is Brooks Shoeshine Parlour, while work has begun on a butcher shop to be operated by Nelson Fairley.
“The stall holders pay for the cost of erecting their stalls, but they can present their construction bills against their rent bills. The rent is set at 12 cents a running foot. However, at the end of three years they must begin to pay rent whether there is still a balance in their favor or not.”
According to Doug Donehue, “In the 50s, the market wasn’t dangerous, it was just spooky.
“In the late 30’s and through the forties and fifties, the buildings along that block (Meeting to Church) on both sides were abandoned. There were car lots throughout the area. On the corner of Meeting and Market, there was Fort Sumter Chevrolet. The body shop had a big steep ramp that went off of Market Street to a big open area where they did the body work. Simmons Motor Company was on the corner of Church and Market. They had a lot where the Church Street Inn is today.
In the 1950s, Donehue was the city editor of the local paper. Also at the paper was man named Lou Remke. Later a respected physician in Beaufort, S.C., Remke was a staff reporter at the time.
Donehue explained, “For some reason, that area of the market was overwhelmed with flies. The lies were just awful down there. We kept hearing these reports about the infestation of flies.
“I said, ‘Lou let’s find out what this is all about.’
“Lou went down there and he walked up to this old black woman who had a bunch of turnips and soup bones and things like that. He said to her, ‘You got a lot of flies down here haven’t cha?’
She looked him right in the eyes and asked, ‘You wanna buy some flies?’
In the area built up across from 85 South Market, things had begun to slide. The fixed stalls so proudly trumpeted in the 1940s, had become darker.
According to Donehue, in the 1950s, old Joe Riley, father of the present mayor, persuaded Mendel Rivers and the Navy Department to build a fleet landing. It is today behind the customs house between Union Pier and the State Ports Authority.
Laughing, Donehue pointed out, “The fleet landing never amounted to a row of pins, because the fleet never came into Charleston. It just sat there and sat there and sat there until, today, it’s ready to fall in the Cooper River.”
Meanwhile, Vincent Chicco the younger died in 1957. His obituary read like it was written by a public relations firm, “Mr. Chicco, whose business interests extended into other states and at one time another country, headed several enterprises in Charleston. He was a founder of several concerns and he had interests in many others.
“One of his earliest and best-known housing projects is the Chicco Apartments at John, Meeting and Hutson streets. He and a business partner, J.C. Long, put up two-thirds of the $300,000 needed to convert the building which had been occupied by American Manufacturing Co. as a bag mill into apartments. The two men and the Federal Housing Authority converted the building in 1943.
“Mr. Chicco had been in the bottler’s supply business during prohibition days and later established beer supply agencies when that beverage was legalized in South Carolina.”
No mention of his supra-legal activities. What it failed to mention was that Chicco not only filled his father’s shoes, but replaced them.
In the converted market shed built up across from 85 South Market, things had begun to slide. The fixed stalls so proudly trumpeted in the 1940s, had become darker.
During this period, a number of tattoo parlors sprung up in the little holes in the wall that now house tourist shops. There were no windows as there are now, so the shops, cafes and tattoo parlors were dingy, dark and foreboding. It should be remembered that, unlike today, this section of the market was not fenced in. In the ‘50s and early ‘60s, when one walked through this section, the smell of urine, pain and broken promises enveloped the whole area.
The newspaper tried to paint it in a different light. In the column called “Do You Know Your Charleston?” that ran two years after Vincent Chicco’s death, the reporter wrote, “:Many of the Negro families who sell their produce on one of the near 100 tables are carrying on a family tradition of selling there that has continued for generations.
“The farmers began arriving before daylight coming b truck bus and car from outlying areas. Selling starts about daybreak and the earliest hours are the busiest.
“The area that was once used for the meat markets now contains a lunch counter, a Negro beauty shop, a Negro barber shop and one dry goods store.
“When Charleston’s City Market was filled with meat and fish stalls, (about fifty years ago), it was customary to feed the scraps to turkey vultures, commonly known as buzzards. The black birds perched on the rooftops of the market buildings to await a handout from the proprietor of a stall. At nightfall, they would fly away to roost in the clump of trees at the edge of town. A fine of $5 was provided for anyone who kicked one of the scavengers.
“The rhyme went: ‘And nowhere more buzzards meet, than once there met in Market Street’ –
“Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are normally the best selling days at the city market. Business is seasonal and during the winter, it sometimes falls off to about 25 operators.
“After closing hours now, the little Negro restaurants do their greatest business, mostly in hot coffee and sandwiches. Often the patrons used to be enlivened during their repasts with reverberating organ music including such collections as ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ by radio.
“On a typical day, hordes of hucksters wagons also appear, their owners lustily crying the virtues of their wares. Dusty Negro farmers from “Jim Islan’ compete in flat accents with the more shrill voices of the women…”
Biology professor, Larry Walker, who later opened Myskns, said that the Octogon Lounge, so called because of the eight-sided window along its storefront, was in business at 83/85 South Market during the 1940s through the 1950s.
“Izzy Sable ran the place and Duke Connelly and Trigger Burke used to hang out in there,” Walker explained.
W. Burneston Baker, the proprietor of the Tavern liquor store, once also a blind tiger, said of Trigger Burke’s relationship with Izzy Sable, “Izzy went around the city introducing him everywhere. They bought clothes at Berlins and they were seen in the Carriage House Restaurant on North Market Street.”
Baker continued, “Izzy Sable ran the Octogon. He was a Jewish boy who ran hookers and liquor out of the Octogon and a place on Folly Beach. His father owned Sable Iron Company, but his old man didn’t have anything to do with all that. Izzy was a friend of Trigger Burke, but he didn’t know who he was. Burke just had a lot of money and Izzy was trying to hustle him.”
To understand who Trigger Burke was, one must hearken back to Boston in the late 40s. The national headlines told of the story of seven people who robbed a Brink’s truck with spectacular results and disappeared.
Apparently the gang made a pact that they would wait until the statute of limitations had run out before they’d divy up. One member decided that he couldn’t wait. The authorities caught him and he began to sing.
Trigger Burke was a hit man who shot at the robber with a machine gun, missing him. Already wanted for a murder in Brownsville, New York, Burke went on the lam and settled in the sparsely-populated Charleston area.
During his lengthy stay at Duke Connelly’s property on the Isle of Palms, Burke came to town where he joined the health club. Week after week, month after month, Burke and the chief of police would see each other at the health club and became fast friends. Although he was a fugitive, he was not of the desperate variety. He had plenty of money which he threw around. He became very hail-fellow-well-met in the community befriending both the official and criminal castes of Charleston society.
All was well for years, until Duke Connelly and his two children disappeared, never to surface. Burke moved to Folly Beach where, eventually, local and federal authorities nailed him at Izzy Sable’s joint out there.
Baker’s voice rasped as he chuckled, “They fried Burke in Sing Sing for that Brownville thing, but he never talked. He never admitted a thing. The powers-that-be in the late ‘50s decided that Sable was becoming too obvious to outside authorities, you gotta remember that liquor by the drink was still illegal, and it wasn’t good that Charleston was getting all this outside attention. Someone was sent to have a little chat with Izzy and they closed him down.”
In the 1960s, the area of the market from Meeting to Church got worse. With the closing down of the Octagon, the Cigar Store opened at that location.
Donehue remembered the Cigar Store.
‘There were two old Greek men,” he recalled. “They ran a little old dark cafe down there. Inside there was a bare light bulb and you could hardly see. They sold hot dogs, drinks and whatever.”
The whatever was bootleg liquor and beer on Sundays and after hours. Izzy’s downfall brought rise to this innocuous cafe
Across the street, the people of Charleston grew sick of the tattoo parlors and by 1966, everything had been cleared out of the first market shed rendering obsolete the old saying, “In the Market, if you have ten dollars and twenty minutes, you can get a steak dinner, a bottle of liquor, a tattoo and a social disease.”
(Author’s note: Today, you can no longer get a tattoo, the wait is longer, the bottle of liquor smaller, the steak more expensive and the disease will probably kill you).
The Cigar Store lasted until 1972, when the mini-bottle law was passed, although other bootleggers in the lower part of the city continued operations well into the 1980s.
There was a great deal of concern about the market in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The Pinckney heirs had good reason to begin rubbing their hands with glee.
Robert Stockton writes in a “Do You Know Your Charleston?” dated April 15, 1974, “…In 1966, it was proposed that the city market be converted into a shopping mall, but the idea was dropped after the Historic Charleston Foundation opposed it.
“In 1970, a proposal to convert a section of the market into a branch bank, was similarly advanced and then dropped.
“In recent years, the produce market which formerly made the City Market a more lively place, had shrunk to one section.
“Two years ago, however, the weekend flea market opened, bringing new activity to the area. The flea market has since spilled over into adjacent buildings on either side of the city market. “
One of those buildings was 83/85 South Market Street.
That same year, Larry Walker opened Myskyn’s.
Walker had been the owner of a bar called The Three Nags, a college hangout, on the corner of St. Philip and George streets. The Three Nags was Charleston’s answer to 60s counter-culture and even though there were still pockets of bootlegging and prostitution scattered in pockets from Calhoun to Broad streets, college officials and the city saw his bar as a threat. The College of Charleston bought the building, razed it and put up a decked parking garage, the first of many, in its stead.
Walker leased the property on Market Street from Bob Kaiser. Kaiser had been a telephone repairman when he married Vincent Chicco’s niece, Ursula, who was heir to all of the Chicco holdings. Kaiser renovated the building, gutting 83 and combining it with 85. Walker later enlarged it further.
Walker promised the city fathers that he’d learned his lesson and was opening a private jazz club. He kept that promise, but one must also take into consideration that for ten years after Myskyn’s opened, one could get a mixed drink or beer anywhere in the city on Sunday save at private clubs. Myskyns was a license to print money for Walker and a valuable part of a lot of people’s lives.
Just as The Three Nags had reflected the hippie movement, Myskyns personified the sex, drugs and rock and roll attitude of the 1970s and 80s. From ‘74 to ‘84, it was a private club with all the attendant privileges. Bands such as the Indigo Girls and Diane Scanlon were regulars. No one went home alone, if they didn’t want to. Liquor and prostitution gave way to free drugs and sex.
In 1984, the state of South Carolina enacted the county option law, whereby each individual county could vote whether liquor by the drink could be sold on Sunday. It passed overwhelmingly in Charleston County.
This was the death knell for bootleggers and private clubs in the lower part of the city. Myskyn’s became a regular bar, and although it attracted much the same crowd, its timbre had changed.
Some it was due in large part for the change in the market which began in 1974. The spaces once occupied by shoeshine and tattoo parlors had been supplanted with then-trendy boutiques, shops and restaurants.
Down the street, more and more flea market vendors showed up, one at a time. The vegetable vendors were getting older and older, the flea market vendors, younger and younger.
Tourism, once limited to late March through early May, was becoming year-round, although, at that point, no one could have predicted its exponential growth and debilitating effects on those, both black and white, who had lived in Charleston for numerous generations. That year, an ad appeared in Southern Living. The picture had been taken down on the houses running along White Point Gardens on South Battery and the caption read, “Charleston, S.C.: The South’s Best Preserved Secret.”
This opened the floodgates until, 31 years later; Charleston hosts five million people a year. In 1984, the year Myskyn’s became a regular bar, all of the carriage companies were, by law, centered in the Market area. The market became a tourist Mecca, so much so, that in the year 2000, two large hotel were built within a block of one another on South Market Street.
In 1987, Ronnie Boles, ever attuned to the wishes of the tourist, bought the lease of 83/85 Market out from Larry Walker. He turned the property into two seafood restaurants geared for the tourists, but never attracted the locals; the patina of death in a seasonal market.
Walker moved Myskyns to 5 Faber Street in 1987, but the new place was more like a disco than a cool joint. Ecstasy replaced cocaine which had replaced liquor, and Walker, now well in middle age like most of his clientele and staff, dropped the whole thing, got a biology degree and is now teaching at the college level.
Ronnie Boles has subbed his lease to a number of owners and still owns a number of seafood restaurants in Mount Pleasant. David Bennett and his partner, John , were roommates at the Citadel who have done well and came back to Charleston to open a restaurant together.
It didn’t work out.
Today, as one ambles down South Market Street, one sees the vibrant hum of a vital urban center fueled by tourism; cell phones on people’s shoulders instead of sacks.
One has to wonder whether a couple passing the building at night won’t hear faint peels of laughter and raucous conversation that had nothing to do with that night’s events; wouldn’t feel the satin touch of Kitty Blair or the savage laconic danger of Trigger Burke lingering for an instant.
One wonders what the market will be like in 2050…
What new tales this building will tell
