The Ghostly Tales Of Charleston's Mills House Inn--Which One?

To say some of Charleston's oldest hotels have tales of the ghostly kind connected with them would be an understatement. After all, the Holy City is one of the oldest metropolitans in the country with a well heeled and notorious history. Why would Mills House Inn be an exception. Both employees and former guests describe seeing Confederate soldiers running up and down the halls searching for water to put out the fires ignited by the Great Fire of 1861, and to top it off, one of the apparitions seen was said to resemble one of the South's most beloved generals, Robert E. Lee.

According to Mills House Inn's documented history, these spectral manifestations make perfect sense. In 1861, Gen. Robert E. Lee came to Charleston to tour the city's harbor defenses. On his visit, he checked into the Mills House. While there, a fire erupted on Hasell Street at the Russell and Co.'s Sash and Blind factory and rapidly spread to Institute Hall and the Circular Church on Meeting Street, nearly a half-dozen blocks south of Hasell Street. Robert E Lee and his staff had climbed to the roof to witness the devastating inferno. When they returned to the hotel's parlor, they found a group of ladies and their babies preparing to leave. Lee took one baby and another officer took the other, and they hastily exited through the cellar into the smoky chaos outside. Back in Mills House, the staff valiantly fought the fire by using wet blankets to smother the sparks and embers that blew onto the roof and window ledges, saving the building from annihilation.

After the fire and Civil War 1865

Herein resides a proposed paradox. The Mills House Inn gracing the corner of Meeting and Queen Streets today was constructed in 1968 and registered its first guests on October 9, 1970, over a 109 years after the devastating fire of 1861. The last buyers and owners of the original Mills House of 1861, Charleston Associates, Richard H. Jenrette, Charles D. Ravenel, and Charles H. P. Duell, planned on renovating the seriously dilapidated building, but efforts proved impractical and decided to demolish it and replace it. The new Mills House Inn would replicate the old with one notable difference, it would have seven stories instead of the original's five. So you see, if we are to believe these ghostly sightings, the Confederate soldiers would be running up and down hallways not familiar to them (maybe that's why they can't find the water) and Robert E. Lee would be in a place he never stayed at.

Today's 7 story Mills House Inn

The history of old Mills House and its property has twists and turns as numerous as the estuary waterways of the Charleston Lowcountry. Part of the Archdale Square, names like Grimke house, St. Mary's Hotel and The Planter's Hotel preceded it. During the early 1840s, the United States Courthouse had offices there and from 1848-1852, there was the Mansion House hotel. The property was owned by the Grimke family until 1827, the year Plowden Weston purchased it. In 1836, Weston's sons sold the Mansion House hotel to wholesale grain merchant, Otis Mills, who continued acquiring neighboring parcels all through the 1940's. With these purchases, Otis Mills now owned a 130'x275' lot on the southwest corner of Meeting and Queen Streets, large enough to carry out his ultimate plan--build a five story hotel bearing his name.

In 1853, the original Mills House was built. Designed by architect John E. Earle and built by contractors James P. Earle and R. Earle at an estimated cost of $200,000, it had an iron balcony across the facade, ornate terra-cotta cornices above the windows, and an arcaded entryway. Much of the architectural trim was imported. The ironwork, marble mantels, and chandeliers were from Philadelphia, stoves and furnaces from New York, and furniture from Boston. However, the stone and marble work for pavement and exterior steps were locally supplied by W. B. White. The hotel boasted a dining saloon, a gentlemen's dining room, a second-floor ladies "ordinary" with tables for 160, and 180 guest rooms. Gas lighting illuminated every room and on each floor were eight "bathing rooms" for ladies; similar rooms for gentlemen were found on the first floor. Water for the baths, steam heating system, and in-house laundry were supplied by wells and cisterns on the property.


Mills House and brick house next to Hibernian Hall 1864

Thomas S. Nickerson, an experienced hotelier, leased the completed Mills House from Otis Mills. Their five-year agreement covered the hotel and outbuildings; Nickerson paid separately for the furnishings, wine, liquor, and other supplies. In mid-1857, Otis Mills negotiated a new three-year contract with Joseph Purcell for $7,500 annually, half of what Nickerson had committed to. Purcell had use of the Mills House and outbuildings, as well as the brick house next to Hibernian Hall, which was fitted up and used as a bar room and billiard saloon. He paid another $17,000 for all the furniture on the premises. It turned out Purcell and Nickerson possibly had a previous working relationship despite their separate agreements with Mills. In 1862, after the 1861 fire, the two were joint proprietors of the Mills House. In 1863, Mills sold the Mills House to Joseph Purcell and T. D. Wagener for $13,500 Confederate dollars. The hotel was sold at auction in 1873 and in 1874, George W. Williams sold it to John Hanckel, Robert Douglass, Eri H. Jackson, and Merritt P. Pickett.

1902

Next, Rosa Lawton Douglas, the niece of James Island dairy farmer, St. John Alison Lawton, set her sights on the Mills House with an idea to take it in a different direction. Soon after purchasing it in 1901, Lawton and architect Rutledge Holmes solicited contractors' bids for remodeling the building into an apartment house. The plans were not executed. Mrs. Douglas sold the property to Cecilia Lawton, her grandmother. The elderly Mrs. Lawton, owner of Battery Dairy--a successful downtown bottler and distributor of the family's milk, renamed the Mills House after her son. The new name was St. John Hotel. President Theodore Roosevelt visited the South Carolina and West-Indian Exposition in 1902 and stayed at the St. John Hotel. She sold the property in 1907 and it remained in the next buyer's family for decades.

Despite Charleston's growing tourism industry, the St. John Hotel suffered from competition. New arrivals on the scene, the Francis Marion and Fort Sumter hotels, opened in 1924. Surviving into the 1960s, eventual lack of revenue needed for modernization and routine upkeep doomed it. The dilapidated structure was sold at public auction to the Charleston associates mentioned earlier--the builders of today's Mills House Inn and the place of the ghostly sightings. One element familiar to the confused phantoms would be the original iron balcony. It was salvaged for reinstallation.

The Mills House story, the old and the new, is another fragment in the Charleston narrative past and present. Stand on any tourist filled street corner from the Battery to King Street and you will hear this narrative espoused enthusiastically to visiting listeners by those who live off its elegance and enchantments. As to my proposed hypothesis, I am not intentionally or unkindly trying to cast any dispersions on the claims made by employees and former guests as to what they have seen in the softly lit hallways of the Mills House Inn. After all, seeing is believing, so it is said. In conclusion, as is often the case, the legend is but a shadow of the reality and occasionally, the realty is but a shadow of the legend. Either way, if the stories are a fanciful way of remembering the actual history, success has been achieved.

The Mills House Wyndham Grand Hotel
115 Meeting Street, Charleston, South Carolina
Phone: 843-577-2400
Room and rates

The Fireproof Building--An Important Puzzle Piece In The Story Called Charleston

Standing triumphantly on the corner of Meeting and Chalmer Streets, shadowed by the magnificent old oaks of Washington Square, its solid masonry walls, flagstone floors, and window sashes and shutters of iron have survived a war, withstood hurricane force winds, and endured an earthquake, but ironically, it was conceived and constructed to stand up to a fire, and it did. After the all-consuming flames of The Great Fire of 1861 burned nearby Circular Church, Institute Hall, and every building on the east side of Meeting Street between Market and Queen Streets, then jumping over Broad Street and cutting a swath of destruction all the way to the river, it successfully past through the conflagration. This Matron of Meeting Street was rightfully named The Fireproof Building.

The Fireproof Building was built by the state between 1822 and 1827. It was constructed by John G. Spindle and designed by Charleston native Robert Mills, the first native-born American to be trained as an architect. Aside from his work in Charleston, Mills was responsible for the Washington Monument and many public buildings throughout the State and nation. Designed to house and protect the state's public records, its structure contained no flammable materials. It is now believed to be the first and oldest building of fireproof construction in the United States.

Mills signature design is seen throughout its simple Greek Doric style. With minimal ornamentation, the exterior conveys a sense of order and serenity. The walls are of brick, stuccoed in imitation of the same. Its two porticoes, with four high columns each on an arcaded basement and triple windows, are typical Mills. The columns are three-and-a-half feet in diameter and crowned with a pediment. While taking photographs of its exterior, I noticed its opposite facing sides were identical to one another.

Renovations of the stair hall.

Although I was not able to enter the building, presently closed to the public, descriptions of its interior make it an architectural photographers dream featuring a three-story oval stair hall with a cantilevered brownstone staircase and cross-vaulted rooms on the main floor. The stair hall is lit by a cupola.

It was originally called the Charleston District Record Building. In recent years, the South Carolina Historical Society has gained title to the iconic building. It is now the headquarters of the SCHS. It was listed in the National Register July 29, 1969; Designated a National Historic Landmark November 7, 1973.

Despite being fireproof, it is not age-proof, as seen by the crumbling stucco along its lower exterior. The SCHS has been making improvements to the building--an obvious deduction confirmed by its blocked stair entrances and piles of old bricks stacked on its porticoes.

Besides being adjacent to famous Washington Square, the Fireproof Building is surrounded by Charleston landmarks. City Hall, St. Michael's Church, Hibernian Hall, Circular Congretional Church and The Mills House Wyndam Grand are all within view. Famous restaurants close by are Husk, Poogan's Porch, Eli's Table, and Fast and French.

The day I was there taking pictures, I saw four different walking tours. I have no doubt The Fireproof Building was part of the guides narrations. Built in a century when destructive city fires raged all around it, bursting Union mortar shells rained down from surrounding batteries, and a great earthquake shook the foundations of the city, it has prevailed. It has become an important puzzle piece in the story called Charleston.

The Husk Restaurant In Charleston-Great Southern Gourmet Experience And Beautiful Location

What is better than spending a day with a special someone? Beginning that great day with a fantastic meal at a downtown Charleston restaurant. The restaurant was the Husk on Queen Street. My expectations were high going in. I had read nothing but rave reviews from various sources. I got further confirmation the night before while sitting on the rooftop bar of the Boathouse Restaurant at Breech Inlet on the Isle of Palms. While in conversation with a couple celebrating their anniversary, they lamented their disappointment over not being able to reserve a table at the Husk, at which time, we informed them we had secured a table for the next day, which made me feel pretty good. Husk did more than live up to those expectations, they made me a true believer.

It was a Sunday afternoon, August 26th, reservations were set for 2:00pm. My first choice would have been 6:00pm, but according to Husk's online reservations there were no tables open until 10:30pm. So, we would be selecting from their Brunch menu. I parked my car at the garage in the Vendue Range and after walking some distance, it dawned on me the Husk was located on the other side of Meeting Street next to Poogan's Porch. I should have parked closer, but as it turned out, the unsuspected mistake would work in our favor anyway, and that is another story.

The Husk is a beautifully restored 1893 Queen Ann home and before becoming Husk, it was a school. The front of the old house was overshadowed on its left side by a huge, stately Magnolia tree. A beautifully landscaped, brick walkway took you to the porch and the large entrance door. The foyer had high ceilings with a large room to the right and steps leading to the second floor, and as it would turn out, where we would be seated. A large chalk board hanging on the wall was a main feature in the entrance way used to list the local sources of its ingredients currently provisioning the kitchen. After apologizing for arriving somewhat past our reservation time, we were seated immediately in a front room on the second floor by a window and presented with the menus shortly there after.

Drinks are traditionally your first consideration. My dinner partner, Keri Whitaker, much more knowledgeable about drinks, suggested trying a mimosa--a mixture of champagne and orange juice. A fitting proposal seeing I like anything containing orange juice. A serving of three pieces of bread was brought out along with our mimosas. An interesting observation was made by my partner. "Why did they bring out three pieces of bread when there are two of us? Wouldn't it make more sense for it to be four pieces or two pieces?" Of course, the question was rhetorical, but nevertheless an appropriate query. We clinked our glasses together signaling the start to our Husk experience.

Our table was close to the upper front porch and we noticed all the tables outside were available. Since it was a beautiful day, we asked if it was permissible for us to change tables to sit outside. Our server, Melanie, was more than gracious about the switch. As it turned out, it was a pleasant change of scenery. It afforded us the opportunity to enjoy the beautiful Charleston afternoon and watch the activity on the street below. The many open tables made me contemplate why a reservation was necessary.

Our First selection was a salad of Kurlos Farms Bibb lettuce, marinated tomatoes, shaved carrots and onions, Brioche croutons, and cucumber buttermilk Vinaigrette. The croutons were superb and the vinaigrette an excellent complimentary emulsion. The meal was off to a good start. Selection number two from the Brunch menu was a cornmeal dusted catfish served over braised cabbage, smoky tomato and field peas. The catfish meat was of a good texture and the smoky tomato juices added a slightly tangy taste. Finally, our dessert was a fried crusted peach pie with a side of ice cream. The perfect conclusion to a satisfying, rewarding brunch.

Finally, one of the highlights of our visit was a drink pulled off of their list of hand crafted cocktails that included punches, modern Husk creations, whiskey based drinks, and Southern bottled beer. The list used a blend of comedic phrases in its presentation adding a lighter touch to balance the formalities. The very first drink on the list caught my attention because its name reminded me of one of my favorite movies, "The School of Rock" starring Jack Black. The name of the drink was "School House on the Rock". It was a blend of Asperol, Cruzan white rum, orange, lime, palm sugar, topped with Beinheim Old #3 ginger ale and unsweetened whipped cream. It was by far the best drink I have ever had the pleasure of wrapping my hands around.

I do not consider myself to be a gourmet connoisseur and it doesn't take much to please me. I couldn't find anything negative about our uplifting experience at Husk, except maybe the hostess could have been slightly more engaging, but maybe I am just fishing to find the slightest flaw in perfection. Our server was very attentive and patiently answered all of our many questions. The presentation of the various dishes was very professional and the food delightfully tasty. The drinks were superb. The total bill was $87. Breaking it down, drinks were $41 and food was $46. The final question: Would I return to the Husk? Absolutely. Where else will I find such an amazing drink, and yes, great southern food? The answer to that question, its all Charleston.

Pictures courtesy Keri Whitaker.
Husk is located at 76 Queen Street. Phone: 843-577-2500

A Charleston Icon Of The Past-The Charleston Hotel

Charleston Hotel

Charleston, like many other cities in America, has both joyously celebrated and tragically suffered through changes inflicted either by planned design or forces beyond its control.

Time, the most unrelenting force, mercilessly moves in only one direction and either you seize the moment and prepare for the next or you end up a "decaying American city", likened to a "poisoned ecosystem", doomed to becoming a ghost town. (No pun intended, Charleston lives off of its ghosts.) Joe Riley, mayor of Charleston, unflatteringly characterized the downtown district by those words, and then, seized the moment. Charleston Place rose from a huge, sandy lot where a JCPenney once stood. The Holy City celebrated and was reborn.

Charleston has on various occasions been tried and tested by the uncontrollable forces wielded by nature in form of earth, wind, and fire. An earthquake devastated the city on August 31, 1886 damaging 2,000 of its buildings. Three-quarters of the homes in the historic district sustained damage of varying degrees when Hurricane Hugo struck the city September, 1989 causing over $2.8 billion in losses. Five major fires have been documented throughout its history, which occurred in 1740, 1778, 1796, 1838, and 1861. Through these upheavals, Charleston licked its wounds and rebounded fairly quickly to become what it is today, one of the most popular destinations to visit.

City icons have been systematically dismantled and others have risen in their place. In recent years, residents watched as the two aged, stately bridges traversing the Cooper River gracefully met their planned demise and the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge ascended in their place - becoming the second longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western Hemisphere. It now stands in the Charleston skyline as a shining beacon of progressive evolution. In early spring, tens of thousands descend upon it for the Cooper River Bridge Run to tread their way into the very heart of Historic Charleston.

Some icons of the past are now only footnotes in history and few Charlestonians are around to even recall where they once stood. They can only be seen in places containing the city archives or photos floating around the Internet, and only if you are looking. The Charleston Hotel was one such icon. It proudly graced Meeting Street for over 120 years and was a cornerstone near the Old Market area. I only happened to stumble upon it while searching through old pictures of Charleston. It carried the distinction of being counted among the first major buildings to be constructed in the Greek revival style in America.

A compelling part of the Charleston Hotel's story revolves around a little known fact due to a lack of a photographic record - there were two Charleston Hotels. The original Charleston Hotel went up in smoke along with a large section of the city’s Ansonborough neighborhood in the famous fire of 1838. It stood less than two years. The second rose from its ashes but in 1960, it met the wrecking ball. Some of the iron works that were part of the old hotel's decor is rumored to be displayed at other places in Charleston. Its address was 200 Meeting Street.

Bank of America

When you are walking in the area of Hymans Restaurant, look across the street. The Bank of America building occupies the sacred ground where the Charleston Hotel once previously stood 52 years ago. The Bank of America building was built in the early 1990's. 

While standing at the front of Hymans, close your eyes and do a "Somewhere in Time." Maybe, if you concentrate hard enough, upon opening your eyes you will find yourself in 1840 dressed in a hoop skirt or a gentleman's suit of the day sipping on mint julep. It certainly would help the transition, the mint julep that is.