“Charleston Is Largely a Matter of Feeling”

Charleston’s early preservationists of the 1920s and 1930s were descendants of the slaveholding classes and their preservation choices reflected their personal aesthetics linked to conservative race and class interests and a romanticized sense of the past. Realtor Susan Pringle Frost, who founded the Society for the Preservation of Old Dwellings, galvanized local elite women to “save” planter-class structures, such as the Joseph Manigault and the Heyward-Washington Houses. Architect Albert Simons, who headed the Board of Architectural Review, imposed his aesthetics on the landscape through the instrument of as historic zoning ordinance, the first in the nation’s history. Simons and city official used New Deal money to clear a low-income African American neighborhood to make room for all-white public housing. The preserved city elite whites created out of personal politics continues to influence Charleston’s planning decisions and gentrification and is an obstacle to social justice in the region.