By Robert Behre
Nov 16, 2024

One of Charleston's last unrestored landmarks — the Old City Jail at 21 Magazine St. — has emerged after a 7-year-long saga to reimagine, rehabilitate and repurpose one of the city's most fraught places into one of its most engaging.

A building that began life around 1802 housing criminals, debtors and enslaved people is now a creative mix of uses, ranging from a tour company on its first floor that gives visitors a glimpse of its past to new offices and an event space on the third floor and on the outside grounds that will define its future.

Importantly, the city, its preservation community and nearby residents worked with the developer, Landmark Enterprises, to give it the flexibility needed to create new commercial and office space in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Such flexibility is key to reusing, and therefore revitalizing, unique properties, whether it's something the size of this jail or the tiny brick filling station at 80 Ashley Ave. 

Architect Jay White of Liollio Architecture added the only visible new touch, a handsome vertical addition in the rear that provides an elevator and external stairs, both of which were needed to satisfy modern handicap access needs and safety codes. Not only is the addition tucked away, but it barely touches the historic jail. It's complementary but not competing.

Very few other renovations of historic buildings receive the kind of governmental scrutiny the jail did. In addition to the city's Board of Architectural Review, the plan of work also needed the blessing of the State Historic Preservation Office and the National Park Service because its work was financed in part by state and federal historic tax credits.

As Jonathan Oakman with Landmark notes, securing all those approvals was a monumental task, as these different agencies had strong opinions that weren't always in agreement. That added time and money to a project that already needed a lot of both.

Old jails may be the most difficult buildings to adapt and reuse, though the city's second jail — the so-called "Seabreeze Hotel," built in the 20th century as an immigration station but later converted into a jail as the city finally closed its Magazine Street jail in 1939 — was successfully fixed up several years ago.

But the Old City Jail posed a far more challenging task: It was built in three segments: a main series of cell blocks that opened in 1802, with a jailer's quarters added closer to Magazine Street in 1859, and a rear, octagonal cell block that was added on the back. After the 1886 earthquake, the 1802 section's floors were rebuilt with steel and concrete. During the past century, the steel rusted and expanded, causing the concrete floors to push against the exterior sides.

Chunks of those floors already had been removed by the time Landmark bought the building, but it was up to Charles Blanchard Construction Co. to remove the rest and rebuild them to stop the damage.

Outside, about 40% of the brick work needed repointing, and 70% of the plaster replaced. All the window bars had deteriorated due to rust; they were removed, repaired and replaced. The nice thing about using the building as offices is they did not have to be attached quite as securely as when burly inmates naturally tested them.

The renovation also kept some ornamental plasterwork and a timber-framed shelter on the grounds, both of which reflect the recent years in which the American College of the Building Arts operated here before moving uptown to the renovated trolley barn.

"It was a challenging project that never truly wanted to get pinned to the mat," Jason Ward of Landmark says. "It was a fight the whole way down."

The stone detail on the front door was meticulously retooled and is more dramatic than the entrance to many churches. Inside the spaces are comfortable and austere in a genuine way.

Landmark received the Historic Charleston Foundation's Whitelaw Founders Award this spring for its rehabilitation and excellent stewardship of the old jail, and more laurels are almost certainly on the way.

When I met Ward years ago as he was embarking on the project, he called it "so scary" and "so cool" and "so interesting." Years later, he's given the city an imposing old jail with a dramatic new and far more cheerful life.

It's so cool and interesting, it's scary.

Read the article on The Post and Courier’s website here.