CHARLESTON — A nearly $3 million restoration effort has begun on twin brick smokestacks towering 135 feet over the East Side neighborhood, the city announced Aug. 13.
It’s been about five years since a city building official ordered they be demolished, citing fears that a hurricane could topple the deteriorating chimneys onto nearby homes. Public outcry was swift among preservation groups and East Side residents who called for their restoration.
In July, City Council approved a nearly $3 million contract with International Chimney Corporation and Commonwealth, a leader in building, demolishing, repairing and preserving industrial structures including historic lighthouses and smokestacks.
A pedestrian walks on Drake Street in Charleston, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025, as the city works on a restoration of the smokestacks at the St. Julian Devine Community Center.
“Protecting these smokestacks means protecting the East Side’s historic skyline,” Mayor William Cogswell said in a release. “They are more than just structures — they are part of Charleston’s history and a source of pride for the community.”
Built in 1935, black smoke once belched from the pillars where the city incinerated its trash until 1956. Later, the chimneys were incorporated into a community center on Cooper Street named in honor of St. Julian Devine, the first African American elected to Charleston City Council since Reconstruction.
“The smokestacks remained, standing as a visual reminder of the neighborhood’s industrial past and its ongoing resilience,” the city’s release read.
In 2021, a city task force decided the two smokestacks should be preserved, but that the city would only pay for half. Another $1.5 million through private fundraising would be needed to save them. That private funding never materialized.
Later that year, the city began a short-term $527,000 project to prevent an imminent collapse and provide temporary reinforcement of the structures. The same contractor now tasked with their full restoration removed an inner lining of fire-proof bricks and secured various weak spots.
According to the funding request approved by City Council, the city did not bid out the project, favoring ICC’s “unique institutional knowledge of the structure that no other vendor retains.”
A crack is seen in the interior brick lining of the East Side smokestacks.
“With the height of hurricane season quickly approaching, the city is aware of the hazards high winds can have (on) the smokestacks,” documents associated with the July funding request read. “It’s in the best interest of the city to authorize ICC Commonwealth at the earliest convenience so they can mobilize and begin the internal shoring as we approach the height of the hurricane season.”
Work is expected to be completed mid-2026.
The Charleston Parks Conservancy allocated about $100,000 to the project, which covers an already completed renovation of the park in front of the community center, according to city spokeswoman Deja Knight McMillan. Another $650,000 is coming from the city’s general fund reserves.
Most of the nearly $3 million bill will be covered by funds generated by the Cooper River Bridge TIF, or tax increment financing, district.
Essentially, TIF districts trap any new property revenues generated from improvements that would otherwise go to the city, county and school board. Instead, those gains are deposited into a bank account controlled by the city to fund public projects like roads, sewers or parks within or nearby that designated zone, and to repay any debt the city incurs as a result.
The Cooper River Bridge TIF district covers many of the East Side neighborhoods where homes were demolished to make way for bridges that used to cross the river before the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge was built. Money generated by that tax district has already been earmarked to fund the Lowcountry Lowline, as well as to buy property on Morrison Drive for affordable housing, which means the city will have to incur debt to pay for it all.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
