Charleston's Centre Market, Established 1807

In the spring of 1807, nineteen years after the initial creation of Market Street, Charleston’s municipal government faced a looming deadline to complete the proposed but long-delayed public marketplace. To avoid a second forfeiture of the extensive property donated by generous neighbors, City Council launched a rapid series of construction projects and drafted a landmark ordinance, the text of which defined the culture of urban food sales for the ensuing century.

To help you understand the significance of this forgotten moment in Charleston’s long history, let’s begin with a quick recap of the previous four episodes. A group of six property owners donated a swath of land to the City of Charleston in 1788 to create a commodious thoroughfare called Market Street, measuring one hundred feet wide and extending one-third of a mile from Meeting Street to the channel of the Cooper River. Having promised to use the site solely as a public marketplace, the city immediately built a single structure near Meeting Street, a 200-foot-long brick shed composed of a two-story central block flanked by a pair of one-story wings extending to the east and west. That building, identified initially as a “Beef Market,” was converted into a dormitory for refugees from Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in the autumn of 1793, a modification that nullified the city’s agreement with the property donors and erased the existence of Market Street. 

To provide sufficient public space for daily food sales after the dissolution of Market Street, City Council spent the ensuing decade cobbling together several new facilities, including a meat market at the east of Queen Street, a “temporary” general market at the west end of South Bay Street, and an underutilized market shed at the east end of Boundary Street. In April 1804, however, General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the principal benefactor of Market Street, proposed terms for a new agreement to resurrect the 1788 plan, including a firm three-year deadline for its completion. City Council accepted the general’s challenge and commenced a flurry of activity to satisfy the terms of their revised contract. Most of the prescribed modifications and legal negotiations were completed before the arrival of Pinckney’s deadline in the spring of 1807, but several key components remained incomplete. Once again, Charleston’s municipal government risked forfeiting its claim to some, if not all, of Market Street. 

Using descriptions recorded during the first decade of the nineteenth century, we can visualize the lay of the land in early 1807 and take an imaginary stroll along the length of Market Street. Let’s start in the area abutting Meeting Street, originally reserved for wagon parking but now the site of Market Hall, and proceed eastward to the Cooper River. The last refugees housed in the Beef Market, if any were present, departed by December 1804 (per General Pinckney’s demand), after which the city refurbished and reopened the building’s west wing in March 1805. That work was more of a gesture than a triumph, however, as most local butchers preferred to work within the newer meat market at the east end of Queen Street. The published Charleston directory for the year 1806 identifies just two butchers renting stalls in Market Street, while forty-four butchers continued to practice their trade in Queen Street.[1] In the spring of 1807, therefore, approximately two-thirds of older Beef Market in Market Street remained vacant and unequipped for business. 

Standing at the intersection of Market Street and Maiden Lane and facing east in early 1807, Charlestonians enjoyed an uninterrupted view across a dusty landscape leading to the Cooper River. The city had in 1804–5 constructed a brick drain through the colonial-era canal running along the center of Market Street to East Bay, then filled that marshy landscape with enough pinewood to obscure most of the old tidal inlet. The resulting solid but unpaved surface extended one hundred feet wide from Maiden Lane to at least Anson Street, at which point the fill-work declined, and one could probably still see the central drain continuing eastward to East Bay Street. Although the broad roadway between Anson Street and Maiden Lane was lower than the present streetscape, City Council in September 1805 designated that portion of Market Street the official parking lot for all vehicles bringing fruits and vegetables the city for sale. 

The portion of Market Street between East Bay and Anson Streets remained unfinished in the spring of 1807 because the city did not yet own the entirety of the land. City Council had applied to the state legislature in December 1806 for legal authority to seize a strip of land at the south end of Raper’s Alley, owned by a distant and incapacitated proprietor, but that legal process dragged on for another year. In January 1807, however, the city concluded an agreement to purchase another necessary piece for completing the market, a small parcel of land at the northeast corner of Anson and Market Streets. 

At the intersection of East Bay and Market Streets, a site long known as Governor’s Bridge, city contractors widened and flattened the crossing in 1802 to create a level causeway over the central brick drain. Immediately to the east of the intersection, in the middle of the canal flowing eastward to the Cooper River, the city proposed in 1805 to erect a platform or stage to serve as a “killing place” for local butchers, from which they might dump unwanted blood and guts into the flowing tidewater.[2] That project was evidently cancelled, however, as municipal officials contemplated a different policy concerning public slaughtering. In the meantime, City Council negotiated with the owners of marshland to the east of Governor’s Bridge in 1806 to secure ownership of a watery swath, one hundred feet wide, extending to the channel of the Cooper River. 

From his mansion at the southwest corner of East Bay and Guignard Streets, General Pinckney witnessed the city’s progress in Market Street and no doubt recognized its deficiencies as the three-year deadline approached in the spring of 1807. The sole building in Market Street, the old Beef Market shed, was barely functional, and ill-equipped to satisfy the community’s butchery needs. The work of obliterating the canal between East Bay and Church Street was mostly complete, but a significant proportion of that space was still impassible. The municipal government had spent nearly $30,000 to improve Market Street in recent years, but the site still lacked the facilities to accomplish its fundamental purpose; that is, to render obsolete the other marketplaces scattered across the peninsular city. In short, the city’s progress fell short of expectations. On the third anniversary of his revised agreement with City Council in April 1807, Pinckney might have issued an ultimatum that garnered their full attention. Whatever the nature of their conversations that spring, Charleston’s intendant and city wardens pledged to complete the long-desired project as quickly as possible, and General Pinckney evidently agreed to extend his deadline for a short period longer.

City Council demonstrated its commitment to Market Street on 6 May 1807, when municipal leaders ratified a robust ordinance outlining plans for completing and governing the public site. Its thirty-five paragraphs constitute the longest and most detailed market law in the city’s history, superseding every colonial act and municipal ordinance relative to market activity ratified between 1692 and 1805, and providing invaluable details that help modern audiences understand the logistics and culture of daily life in the city’s largest public forum. The law set a novel tone in the very first clause by branding the site with an enduring name unfamiliar to modern Charlestonians. Henceforth, declared the city government, “the market in Market Street, throughout its whole extent, from Meeting Street to the channel of the Cooper River, shall be known and distinguished by the name of the Centre Market.”[3]

The market ordinance of May 1807 wasted no time in addressing the most immediate needs to render the site fully functional. It directed the municipal board of market commissioners “to cause the brick building in Market-street [near Meeting Street] to be fitted up with all convenient speed for the accommodation of butchers and vendors of beef and other meats.” Immediately to the east of that nineteen-year-old structure, the same commissioners were obliged “to cause to be erected without delay a temporary wooden building or shades, in Market-street aforesaid, between Maiden-lane and Church-street, for the accommodation of persons selling vegetables and other provisions.” 

Eight hundred feet further east, Council ordered the commissioners “to cause to be constructed, as soon as may be practicable, a suitable building for a Fish Market, in Market-street aforesaid, to the eastward of the Governor’s Bridge; and generally to make or cause to be made, all such other appendages and improvements in Market-street aforesaid, as to the said Commissioners or a majority of them may appear proper and conducive, to render the Centre Market the principal market in and for the City of Charleston.” As soon as the Beef Market was fully restored and ready to shelter all of the city’s butchers, Council ordained that “the market, which was heretofore kept in Queen-street, shall be discontinued,” and pledged to give the public at least two weeks’ notice of its impending closure. After that time, the city declared it illegal to sell butchered meat anywhere within the city limits except in Market Street.

The second section of the 1807 market law prescribes a system of numbering the dozens of new “stalls and shambles” to be built along the north and south interior walls of the existing Beef Market, including its vacant east wing. This text evidently conformed to the butchers’ desire to occupy new stalls in the larger building in Market Street that replicated, as far as possible, their familiar ranks within the Queen Street market. Later sections of the ordinance confirm that the city planned to sell a formal lease for each stall, contracts specifying a certain term of years and regular payments of four dollars per month. Butchers were prohibited from selling or transferring the unexpired term of their respective leases to another party, without the consent of the market commissioners, but the city permitted the widow or children of a deceased butcher to continue his business for the unexpired term, using enslaved men whom they owned or hired. The ordinance also articulated a less formal policy for the rental of the wooden vegetables stalls or “stands” to be erected between Maiden Lane and Church Street, for which the city charged a fee of twenty-five cents per week, paid in advance and renewable for as many weeks as desired. Transient folks could also rent a vegetable stand for a single day by paying the inflated rate of twelve-and-a-half cents. 

Persons transporting fruit, vegetables, and sides of beef to the market continued to park their wagons in the ample vacant space of Market Street, but the ordinance of 1807 dictated an important change in policy affecting the vendors of “small meats.” Since the incorporation of Charleston in 1783, the municipal government had prohibited the slaughtering of mature cattle and oxen within city limits, but the killing of smaller mammals continued at the city’s waterfront markets well into the early years of the nineteenth century. Beginning in May 1807, however, the city dictated “that sheep, swine, calves, and goats, intended for sale, shall not be killed in any part of the city, except in such place or places, as the commissioners of the markets or a majority of them may appoint.” In a separate rule published two months later, the commissioners notified the public that after the 31st of July, “no sheep, swine, calves, or goats, intended for sale at the Centre Market, shall be killed at any place within the city, but that they shall be brought to market ready [and] cleaned for sale.”[4] This new prohibition, which was rigidly enforced by market officials, fostered the growth of an evolving and controversial suburban phenomenon called “Butcher Town,” which we’ll explore in a future program. 

Despite this change in slaughtering policy, the market ordinance of 1807 permitted the vendors of “small meats” to continue their traditional practice of bringing live animals to the marketplace for sale. The city provided enclosed “pens” somewhere within the broad landscape of Market Street to confine livestock during a maximum of six days each week, but made it illegal “to shut up any sheep, swine, calves or goats, one or more, in any open pen attached to any of the public markets in the city, from Saturday night till Monday morning.” Butchers vending such live animals to customers in Market Street were obliged to transport the beasts beyond the city limits for slaughter, then bring their carcasses back to the marketplace to complete the transaction. 

A later section of the ordinance required the Commissioners of the Market to meet regularly and conduct administrative business within “the upper room in the brick building of the Centre Market.” They had abandoned this elevated space within the building’s central block in the mid-1790s, but it was evidently refurbished and reoccupied for official purposes in the summer of 1807. In a number of public notices published during the ensuing three decades, the commissioners repeatedly identified their upstairs office as “Market Hall.” A cupola above the commissioner’s room evidently housed a “market bell,” which the salaried clerk of the market was obliged to ring at sunrise on every market day (generally six days in the week) to announce the legal commencement of food sales. 

The 1807 description of the clerk’s duties required him to attend in Market Street from sunrise to midday every Monday through Friday, and every Saturday from sunrise to sunset—a schedule that suggests many urban households might have performed the bulk of their weekly food shopping on Saturdays. Alternatively, the clerk’s extended weekend hours might reflect a widespread habit of procuring extra supplies on Saturday afternoons to avoid visiting the market on Sunday, the traditional Christian day of rest. City Council had approved a limited schedule of Sunday market hours in 1803 and reiterated the same in 1807, but canceled the controversial practice by an ordinance ratified in 1843.[5]

Another section of the 1807 law addressed the working hours of the city numerous hucksters, ambulatory vendors traversing the city streets carrying milk, grain, fruits, vegetables, or “fresh fish and other aquatic animals.” City officials permitted these free-ranging, predominantly-enslaved men and women to begin their work at 9 a.m. each day, a fact suggesting that their stationary counterparts in Market Street conducted most of their business between sunrise and 9 a.m. If a customer wanted to procure the ripest tomatoes or the freshest shrimp, for example, he or she had to visit the Centre Market or send someone in their stead just after sunrise; otherwise, they might have to purchase stale and leftover goods from one of the perambulating hucksters later the same day.

Among the numerous other provisions articulated in the market ordinance of 1807 are a few brief references to rudimentary wooden features reserved for corporal punishment. Like every public space reserved for market activity in Charleston from late seventeenth century to the Civil War, and those in other communities, the Centre Market included a set of stocks and a whipping post. Their placement within that broad landscape is unknown, but precedent suggests that city officials selected locations to maximize the public humiliation of persons convicted of violating the market rules and regulations. 

In mid-May 1807, one week after City Council ratified the new market ordinance, the clerk of the Centre Market solicited bids from carpenters for erecting new wooden stalls within the old Beef Market and rearranging those installed in the west end of the building just two years earlier.[6] The market commissioners also engaged a contractor to erect the aforementioned “temporary wooden building” between Maiden Lane and Church Street, but details of its design are lacking. Nevertheless, on July 10th, the market clerk solicited bids for painting the newly-built “Vegetable Market in Market Street,” specifying that the roofing “shingles to be Spanish brown; the back and front to be stone color,” and the individual “stalls” within both structures to be identified with a painted number.[7]

On Bastille Day (July 14th) 1807, the city government announced that the meat market in Queen Street would close permanently at the end of business on Friday, July 31st, and the Centre Market in Market Street would officially open on Saturday morning, August 1st.[8] During the remainder of July, the Commissioners of the Market invited vendors to visit “their Hall over the Centre Market” to purchase leases for stalls within the new Vegetable Market and the refurbished Beef Market.[9] Without fanfare or ceremony, the residents and food vendors of urban Charleston commenced an enduring new tradition in Market Street with the first sunrise of August 1807.

Despite the general exodus of butchers from the market facility near the east end of Queen Street in August 1807, that waterfront site continued to attract a steady stream of seafood customers. The market ordinance ratified several months earlier stated that the Fish Market at the extreme east end of Queen Street would close as soon as a similar structure could be completed near the east end of Market Street. In late July, the Commissioners of the Market published a call for bids that includes several useful details about the proposed building’s design. The new Fish Market to be erected “in the canal to the eastward of Governor’s Bridge” was to be “of the same dimensions as the Fish Market at the east end of Queen-street; the foundation to be laid, on each side of the canal, four bricks thick, to the height of nine feet. The roof to be supported on pillars 22 ½ inches, by four feet, to be carried up ten feet above the floor” and “fixed in the same manner and form as that of the Fish Market in Queen-street.”[10]

While that construction work commenced in mid-August 1807, the market commissioners advertised to sell the various materials of “the former Flesh Market,” completed just eight years earlier near the east end of Queen Street, all of which was to be removed within a month’s time. One week later, however, city officials decided they might reuse some of the materials to raise a comparable structure in Market Street.[11] In late August, the Commissioners of the Market advertised for bids “to dig and lay the foundation of a Flesh Market, to commence one hundred feet west from the Governor’s Bridge,” for which the contractor could recycle all the bricks removed from the disused structure in Queen Street. Their request for bids included curious details of the proposed foundation, which evidently straddled the exposed brick drain running along the center line of Market Street: “The market to be one hundred and eighty feet long, twenty-six feet wide, the foundations to be laid on cross plank or joist, three inch[es] thick, and to be about eight feet below the present surface—the walls at the bottom, to be four bricks thick, and diminish gradually to two and a half bricks at the top, which is to be two feet above the present surface.” Contractors completed this robust, subterranean foundation by the end of 1807 and commenced the building’s upper walls sometime in 1808, but later records suggest that the intended “Flesh” or “Small Meats Market” it wasn’t completed until late 1809.[12]

As the late summer of 1807 waned in the Palmetto City, a local newspaper published a brief but useful anecdote about the volume of vehicular traffic at the new Centre Market. During its first month of business at the city’s principal depot for fresh food, the clerk attending the daily activities recorded a total of 264 carts and wagons visiting to site specifically to vend country produce.[13] Crowds gathered along that broad thoroughfare also witnessed men laboring in the mud near the Cooper River until October 15th, when the market commissioners announced “that the Fish Market, in Market-street, to the eastward of the Governor’s Bridge, is now finished, and ready for the use of fishermen.” After the last day of the month, they declared, “the Fish Market heretofore kept in Queen-street, will be discontinued.”[14] By mid-November 1807, the city’s Commissioners of Streets and Lamps observed “that the east end of Queen Street is now left entirely open, and much exposed since the removal of the market.”[15] This newly-vacant space required additional filling to improve the seventy-two-foot-wide roadway, which became known as Vendue Range by 1810.

Here in twenty-first century Charleston, the landscape of our “Centre Market” appears very different from that described in 1807. I plan to review the construction sequence of the present Market Street sheds in a future program, but, in the spirit of Halloween, let’s take a morbid detour into darker territory. Join me next time for a historical tour of the ghastly sights and horrid smells of Butcher Town, Charleston's notorious slaughtering suburb.