{"id":37,"featured":0,"modified":"2025-01-24 20:49:30","latitude":32.7927681999999975914761307649314403533935546875,"longitude":-79.93152010000000018408172763884067535400390625,"title":"Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon, 122 East Bay Street","address":"122 East Bay Street, Charleston, SC 29401","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/b667d6a2e9831742e23f6fbd001a1e1c.jpg","creator":["Jenn Curtis"],"description":"

The Old and Exchange and Provost Dungeon at 122 East Bay Street was built in 1771 as a customs house for the city of Charles Town. Built on top of the location of the former Watch House and part of the Half-Moon Battery of the old city walls, it was designed by William Rigby Naylor and constructed by Peter and John Horlbeck. This building was strategically placed at the end of Broad Street in the commercial center of the city with wharves around it for easy access to trade goods. This building has served many purposes throughout the history of Charleston such as customs house, city hall, and post office.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the beginnings of the Old Exchange, citizens of Charleston and other landowners bought and sold everything from houses, property, and furniture, to livestock here.<\/span> Outside, on the north side of the building, an open lot often served as one of the most popular places to sell Africans and African descended people within the city. To slave traders and auctioneers, using this space for slave auctions made good business sense and was legally supported by the U.S. Constitution before the ratification of the 13<\/span>th<\/span> Amendment.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the start of the nineteenth century, the auctioning of enslaved people in Charleston was very common around the city. Many places such as Gadsden\u2019s Wharf and other places around the harbor were used as auction sites as well. But the selling of Africans and African descendants north of the Exchange building was so popular that residents often complained that the auctions were causing traffic jams on East Bay Street. Travelers to the city would often observe some of these public sales and write about them. Captain Basil Hall of the Royal Navy, while passing the Exchange, described a scene of a father and mother being brought up for the auction with a baby on the mother\u2019s hip and two boys hugging her knees as money offers were called for the whole family or just one of the members. Another witness to the auctions, the British painter, Eyre Crowe, while on an 1854 visit to Charleston with the writer William Thackeray, painted what he saw at one of these auctions near the Old Exchange. That painting, <\/span>A Slave Sale in Charleston, South Carolina<\/span><\/i>, is now one of the most well-known images of slave auctions today. In 1856 the city passed an ordinance banning the sale of Africans and African descendants on the streets of Charleston. <\/span>Thus, slave auctions left the north side of the Old Exchange and moved inside other buildings, mostly on State and Chalmers Streets<\/span>. <\/span>One of these slave auction houses, Ryan\u2019s Mart, is the Old Slave Mart Museum at 6 Chalmers Street today.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Old Exchange was also a scene of tension between slave owners and abolitionists. In 1835, the Exchange functioned as the city\u2019s post office. After the emancipation of slaves in the British Indies in 1833, abolitionists in the United States began to send anti-slavery pamphlets and literature to Charleston to protest the city\u2019s use of slavery. This angered the pro-slavery citizens in Charleston who decided to destroy the abolitionist mail at the Exchange in July 1835. The first night that the incensed, white citizens tried to destroy these texts, they were stopped by a member of the City Guard as destruction of mail was a felony.<\/span> The next night the mob tried to do this, the postmaster, Alfred Huger, was not able to stop them. The crowd opened one of the windows and took the bundles of abolitionist texts, throwing them on a bonfire on the parade grounds of the Citadel, now Marion Square. According to the <\/span>Charleston Courier<\/span><\/i>, this event was a sign to the North to stay out of the South\u2019s business and to protect their institution of slavery.<\/span><\/p>\n

The building survived the Civil War, but suffered damage during the 1886 earthquake. The Daughters of the American Revolution bought the building and prevented its destruction in 1921. The city of Charleston restored the building between 1979 and 1983 and manages the site as a museum for colonial\/American Revolution history. The Old Exchange has worked to document its place in the slave trade in Charleston. A historic marker detailing its role in the slave trade was dedicated on the north side of the building on March 10, 2016 in acknowledgement of what took place there.<\/span><\/p>","sponsor":null,"subtitle":null,"accessinfo":null,"lede":"The Old and Exchange and Provost Dungeon at 122 East Bay Street was built in 1771 as a customs house for the city of Charles Town.","website":null,"related_resources":["Basil Hall, Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828<\/i>. (London, UK: Simpkin and Marshall, 1830).


<\/span>","Maurie D. McInnis, <\/span>Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade.<\/span><\/i> (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2011).<\/span>","Poston, Jonathan H. for Historic Charleston Foundation. <\/span>The Buildings of Charleston: A Guide to the City\u2019s Architecture.<\/span><\/i> (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1997).<\/span>","Robert Behre, \u201cSlave auction painting basis of Old Exchange exhibit,\u201d The Gazette<\/i>, February 18, 2016, Charleston Vertical File: Buildings \u2013 122 East Bay (Old Exchange). South Carolina History Room at Charleston County Public Library.


<\/span>","Ruth M. Miller and Ann Taylor Andrus, <\/span>Charleston\u2019s Old Exchange Building: A Witness to History.<\/span><\/i> (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2005).<\/span>","\u201c\u2019Slave Auctions\u2019 Historic Marker\u201d program, March 10, 2016. Charleston Vertical File: Buildings \u2013 Old Exchange. South Carolina History Room at Charleston County Public Library.<\/span>","The Charleston Courier<\/span><\/i> July 31, 1835.<\/span>"],"factoids":[],"files":{"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/b667d6a2e9831742e23f6fbd001a1e1c.jpg":{"id":365,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"Old Exchange in "View of Charles-Town"","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/b667d6a2e9831742e23f6fbd001a1e1c.jpg","description":"The building can be seen from across the harbor in this circa 1776 engraving by Thomas Leitch titled, "View of Charles-Town, the Capital of South Carolina", and engraved by Samuel Smith. Courtesy of the Library of Congress."},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/8f0578337f88b46fb4050c31e3d9baea.jpg":{"id":262,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"The Old Exchange","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/8f0578337f88b46fb4050c31e3d9baea.jpg","description":"The Old Exchange Building was built in 1771 as the customs house for Charleston. Photograph courtesy of Jenn Curtis."},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/084e1af70885cb0a4d622f2c694f65f1.jpg":{"id":263,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"North Side of the Exchange","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/084e1af70885cb0a4d622f2c694f65f1.jpg","description":"The north side of the Old Exchange Building. Prior to the ordinance of 1856, this space was an open lot where slave auctions occurred. Photograph courtesy of Jenn Curtis."},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/01564e24657011efab3d7b440dab6c45.jpg":{"id":265,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"\u201cSlave Sale, Charleston, South Carolina\u201d","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/01564e24657011efab3d7b440dab6c45.jpg","description":"This sketch was inspired by a slave auction that
\r\nCrowe witnessed at the Old Exchange during his visit to Charleston. Courtesy of the New York Public Library."},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/6c8f9857f409c720b65c6cebe2733400.jpg":{"id":267,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"Front of Historic Marker","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/6c8f9857f409c720b65c6cebe2733400.jpg","description":"The front side of Historic Marker. This was put up at the Old Exchange in 2016 to bring light to the past of slave auctions in the area. Photograph courtesy of Jenn Curtis."},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/1cc43e02d2c832e74a2a9518673fb354.jpg":{"id":268,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"Back of Historic Marker","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/1cc43e02d2c832e74a2a9518673fb354.jpg","description":"The back side of the historic marker at the Old exchange containing information on how the site operated as a place for slave auctions. Photograph courtesy of Jenn Curtis."},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/42e43b50cc28ed9b816a92afad93db69.jpg":{"id":361,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":""Attack on the Post Office"","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/42e43b50cc28ed9b816a92afad93db69.jpg","description":"Political cartoon showing an angry mob stealing abolitionist literature out of the Old Exchange in the 1830s. Courtesy of the Library of Congress."},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/b12d0de6dcb75b112d5f0141921299f6.jpg":{"id":418,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"Early 19th Century Engraving","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/b12d0de6dcb75b112d5f0141921299f6.jpg","description":"This is an early 19th century engraving of the Old Exchange Building. Drawn by J. Shaw; engraved by W. Mason. Courtesy of Historic Charleston Foundation Archives."}}}