Slave Houses - Boone Hall Plantation House and Historic Landscape - Mount Pleasant, SC - NRHP Historic Districts - Contributing Buildings on Waymarking.com

County of site: Charleston County
Location of site: Oak Ave., N. of State Rd S-10-97 (Long Point Rd.), ½ mile W. of US-17, Mount Pleasant
Built: 1850
Architect: William Harmon Beers
Contractor: Cambridge M. Trott

"2. Slave Houses. Nine one-story brick houses en filade paralleling the allée to the northwest. These houses are said to have been the homes of the Boone Hall house servants. The brickwork of the houses suggests a construction date in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, and the available documentation lends credence to a ca. 1790 date. The buildings are one story, measuring about twelve feet by thirty feet, with gable roofs. Each house is built of brick laid in haphazard bond, which sometimes follows English bond. Each house has a central doorway and four windows with brick segmental-arched heads on its southwest elevation. There are single windows centered on the southeast elevation of each building and single attic windows in the gable ends on both the southeast and northwest elevations. The windows and doorways have new wooden shutters and surrounds. The rear (northeast) elevations of the slave houses have external brick chimneys with raked shoulders and narrow detached chimney stacks. The gable ends have raked parapets rising above the roofline. The roof structures of the cabins were originally heavy-timber rafters with pegged mortise-and-tenon ridge joints; some of the roof structures are intact, while others have been rebuilt with modern mill-sawn lumber. At one point in time, the houses had two interior partitions dividing each house into two rooms flanking a central hall; in those houses which are open to public view, these partitions have been removed. The floors are plank or dirt, and the bare brick walls have traces of plaster in some of the houses. The ceiling joists and the rafters are exposed, although there may at one time have been garrets in the houses. There is a simple fireplace with a brick hearth and no mantelpiece at the rear of each house.

"The Slave Street, Smokehouse, and Allée, Boone Hall Plantation, located on the grounds of Boone Hall Plantation in rural Charleston County, South Carolina, are those elements of the plantation that effectively convey aspects of the history of the property from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. The plantation was developed in many stages from the late seventeenth century by the Boone family, the Horlbeck family, and others; the nominated properties date from the occupancy of the Boones and Horlbecks. The slave street, one of the few surviving such streets in South Carolina, is a good example of the nature of slave housing in the antebellum plantations of the state. The allege is a significant work of antebellum landscape architecture. Additionally, some of the brick slave houses and the brick smokehouse on the property embody the distinctive characteristics of eighteenth and early nineteenth century brickmasonry in South Carolina.

"The brick walls of the slave houses are in varying stages of deterioration. The original bricks show considerable spalling and deterioration, and much of the original mortar has leached out. All of the slave houses have been repointed at various times with Portland cement mortar, which often obscures original brickwork and hastens the disintegration of the soft bricks. Many of the original bricks have been replaced, and some of the brick arches have been rebuilt with modern brick. The repairs to the original brickwork compromise the visual, structural, and historic integrity of the slave houses, but there remains sufficient original fabric to convey the historical nature of the buildings.

"Black History: The slave street at Boone Hall Plantation is expressive of the nature and characteristics of slavery in South Carolina in the antebellum period. The nine slave houses included in the nomination are said to be the survivors of twenty-seven houses that were on Boone Hall at one time. These surviving houses are reported to have been for the house servants of the plantation. The houses were identical, arranged in a regular row, with small parcels of land between each house. Although most of the houses at Boone Hall have undergone considerable deterioration and alteration, the spartan living conditions of the slaves are effectively conveyed. The slave street at Boone Hall Plantation is one of the few surviving slave streets identified in South Carolina; other slave streets are intact at Lavington Plantation in Colleton County and at Friendfield Plantation in Georgetown County." ~ NRHP Nomination Form