P&C highlights demolitions that threaten historic buildings

The threat of unauthorized demolitions in Charleston is real and the PSC is glad to see The Post and Courier reinforcing the importance of preventing needless, irretrievable loss of culturally significant buildings. There is pressing need for greater awareness of the elements that make Charleston’s historic neighborhoods unique, education on how to properly care for them, and clarity in the permitting process to ensure that approved repairs don’t cross the line into demolition. Time is of the essence to address the underlying issues that lead to heavy-handed renovations and unauthorized demolition.

The PSC is working to give residents tools to understand and celebrate what’s special about where they live by supporting Area Character Appraisals, including one in Wagener Terrace, completed in 2024, and one currently underway in North Central. We also convened a panel of experts to tackle the demolition problem at our Winter Membership Meeting in January. We are committed to working with property owners, design and construction professionals, city staff, elected officials, and other stakeholders to develop solutions for protection of Charleston’s unmistakable sense of place.

This opinion piece was originally published in The Post and Courier on March 21, 2025:

P&C Editorial: Charleston shouldn’t neglect lingering problem of demolition by neglect

Those familiar with Charleston realize that demolition by neglect has long been a challenge in the city; too many property owners have refused to fix up their dilapidated buildings or sell their property to someone who will. In the most egregious cases, some have cynically waited until their historic building falls down in order to make more profit from a vacant site than a building that would be expensive to save.

But recently, a related but slightly different concern has emerged: owners who don’t ignore their property but undertake clumsy, heavy-handed renovations that essentially demolish, bit by bit, a historic building while ostensibly claiming to repair it. One sad example occurred last year when a small cottage — a style known as a Charleston cottage or a freedman’s cottage — imploded at 190 Line St. after it had been gutted during repairs. The dramatic collapse was caught on a neighbor’s doorbell camera. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

A similar story played out at 194 Nassau St., where the city’s Board of Architectural Review denied an application to demolish a small cottage. Only repairs were approved, but it was demolished and rebuilt instead. “We’re increasingly seeing that even those with permits in hand can intentionally misconstrue them to prioritize replacing materials over repairing them,” Preservation Society of Charleston CEO Brian Turner said. “In practical terms, what is repairable versus what warrants replacement is often difficult to enforce.”

We don’t know the precise language that City Council could adopt as a sort of silver bullet to fix this problem, but the first step is certainly to broaden public awareness of it. That will help reveal tools to fix it. As a start, the city can convene contractors, design professionals, preservationists and neighborhood leaders to search for new ways to address it.

It’s good that, as Ali Rockett recently reported, the city’s Planning and Preservation Department is preparing for an updated tally of endangered Charleston cottages — modest one-story, one-room-wide homes that proliferated in Charleston following the Civil War. And it’s good that the department also plans to survey other historically significant but previously overlooked structures. It’s also good that the Board of Architectural Review has been holding the line, denying four of five demolition requests in the past year.

As Mr. Turner said, the preservation movement has expanded beyond the built environment in recent decades to advocate on issues of livability and cultural preservation. “But the physical loss of older places, places of meaning, can be the canary in the coal mine, leading to the loss of our culture and our quality of life,” he said. “Irretrievable loss has always been a core motivator for our movement, and the loss of a cherished place can rattle the soul.”

Charleston has long been about minimizing such irretrievable losses — and it has done a generally good job with a few unfortunate exceptions — but this work is never done.

The good news is the number of vacant buildings on the peninsula, which are often most at risk, has dropped from 386 in 2011 to 199 last year, so the demolition-by-neglect problem is being helped by the city’s rising prosperity and land values. But that doesn’t mean the city should neglect its search for new ways to crack down on that small percentage of property owners still determined to do the wrong thing.

This opinion piece was originally published in The Post and Courier on March 21, 2025.