On Tuesday I went to an open house hosted by Union Pier and a slew of planning, design, landscape, engineering, engagement, and economy experts. I was invited as a community member here in Charleston to lend my voice (not just me y’all) to the collective feedback of what is hoped to be a revitalized waterfront downtown.

Oddly, I’ve been around the site multiple times since moving here. In fact, I can walk to the pier from my house. After moving into my place on the Eastside (what apparently is being called The Peninsula), I was told that my mother worked up the block at the Cigar Factory. This is wild because I found my place during a relatively easy internet search; without ever setting eyes on the place until my daughter and I walked through the door.

I also imagine that Union Pier was a locale frequented by my great uncle Samuel Smalls aka “Porgy” who inspired the novel by DuBose Heyward and thus the opera Porgy and Bess. Uncle Samuel was believed to have lived on Cabbage Row (Catfish Row) only minutes away from the pier on foot (I should mention here that Uncle Samuel was disabled and got around in a makeshift cart).

None of this can be a coincidence. I was unprepared for the feelings that would bubble up in me during the tour. There were 4-5 stops along the 70 acre site but the stop that caught me off guard was Stop 2, The Bennett Rice Mill, presented by someone who I had been following on social media for some time. Her name is Brittany V. Lavelle Tulla, Proprietor & Lead Architectural Historian of BVL Historic Preservation Research and I was so taken by her presentation that I wanted to quote her recap here that I snagged from her Instagram account.

Please read with care and offer any feedback if you feel so inclined.

“For the first time in generations, Charlestonians were able to get up close & personal to what’s left of the 1840s Bennett Rice Mill, & it was a dream to be the one standing there to tell the story when the gates finally opened. For nearly a century, this facade has been behind a fence, under intense security due to its location along the port - but yesterday that all changed as part of the Union Pier Open House.

The 70-acre property, fully paved in the twentieth century to accommodate modern port activities, was once home to several of Charleston’s most important wharves - each comprised of wooden docks, slips, warehouses, counting houses, enslaved dwellings & much more. The Bennett Rice Mill was erected along Bennett’s Wharf (behind today’s Harris Teeter on East Bay) to process rice - cultivated on the surrounding plantations through the work of an enslaved labor force - directly at the port before its exportation all over the world. Not only did hundreds of enslaved people grow the rice - a cash crop that made Charleston one of the wealthiest cities in the colonies & later, the nation - but dozens likely built this structure & worked inside, making it one of the most industrious mills in nineteenth-century America.

After the Civil War & attempts to maintain rice processing operations here for the next few decades, the building fell into disrepair after long-term neglect. A tornado in 1938 & subsequent hurricanes were the final demise. The building was ultimately abandoned by the 1940s & most of the building crumbled by 1960.

BUT in pure Charleston form, midcentury preservationists fought to save what was left & made a deal with the port to maintain the surviving facade. And thank the lord they did because the facade now stands as the last remaining architectural survivor within the 70-acre Union Pier property that dates to before the Civil War.

There are finger prints in this brick. There are likely hints beneath the pavement. And there will be interesting conversations moving forward on the best way to incorporate this facade into the Union Pier development project. Charleston has a big responsibility to get this right.”

Special shout out to Black Charleston, (TheTyka Robinson of ) The Asiko Group, and (Kevin Kim of) Nelson Byrd Woltz for their attention to inclusivity during this process.