CHARLESTON — Neighbors along Bull Street and others in Harleston Village successfully petitioned the city’s zoning board to reconsider allowing an addition to be built onto the back of a home that’s been designated a National Historic Landmark.
The home at 56 Bull Street is known as the Denmark Vesey House. A significant figure in Charleston’s fraught racial history, Vesey, who help found what would later become Emanuel AME Church, was hanged in 1822 after news of a planned insurrection he organized reached White elites.
Vesey is hailed as a freedom fighter among Black residents, who question whether changes to the home could lessen its significance.
“A free man viewed as a hero and martyr for freedom resided there, so therefore it should be protected as the other historical landmarks,” said the Rev. Anthony Thompson, pastor of Holy Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church, a Black congregation that has been across the street from the Vesey home since 1880.
The owner, who purchased the house last year, wants to add an additional bed and bathroom to the rear of the home, which is currently listed as a 30-day rental.
All 30 church members in attendance on July 13 signed a petition opposing the variance that would allow for the attached addition.
“We have worked hard to keep our church preserved as it originally was, and it is our hope that the Denmark Vesey house will not be altered,” the petition read. “We feel that as one of the few Afro-American sites still available in Charleston, an attached alternation to this house would not be in the best interest of preserving history.”
Jewel of the neighborhood
Kevin Mills, a Myrtle Beach realtor, purchased the home for nearly $1.5 million in November.
During a Board of Zoning Appeals meeting Aug. 5, he said that he and his family lived there a month before they had to relocate elsewhere to honor a 90-day rental that was booked under the previous owner.
During their stay, Mills said the family of four found the 931-square-foot cottage too small, so he enlisted the help of local architect Julia Martin to add another bedroom.
City building codes allow Mills to build an unattached accessory unit in the backyard, but modern flood codes require any new structure be elevated, meaning it would be visible from Bull Street.
“This is very well preserved 19th century dwelling, and we’re highly sensitive to preservation concerns,” Martin said at an earlier board meeting where their variance request for an attached addition was approved by a slim 4-3 vote. “We would want anything we add here to be modest and differential. An attached edition could be tucked behind the current eave and effectively hidden,” she added.
Martin spoke with adjacent neighbors, who at first appeared supportive. But concerns grew after it was discovered the Mill family wouldn’t be living in the home full time.
This prompted Ron Horne, who lives next door, to file an appeal asking the board to reconsider its earlier approval.
Neighbors say they believe the request is just a cash grab, equating that another bedroom means more rent. Currently, the Zillow listing advertises the three-bed, two-bath rental for $6,500 a month. It’s been listed for as much as $8,550 this year, according to Zillow’s price history.
“It’s a blatant attempt to increase the income,” Horne said.
Horne lives in the carriage house on the rear of his property, which would be just a few feet from the new addition. He rents out two units in the larger home at the front of his property, as do several other surrounding neighbors.
Phil Noble, who lives down the block, said the Vesey home is one of the only nationally recognized sites in the historic neighborhood bordered by the College of Charleston, the Medical University of South Carolina, Broad Street and the Ashley River.
“To add to it, it’s a historic sacrilege,” he said. “It’s defiling the crown jewel of the neighborhood.”
Mills told the board on Aug. 5 that once the addition is complete, he doesn’t plan to continue to rent it out, even when his family is not living there.
“I think it stands for so much, and I’m not trying to ruin that,” Mills said. “I’m out there trying to preserve it.”
A complex history
In 1799, Vesey purchased his freedom from bondage for $600 with lottery winnings.
With the rest of the money Vesey rented a home on Bull Street, where he established a carpentry business and history contends he plotted a rebellion to free those who remained in bondage, including his own children.
The plot was thwarted before a shot was fired. More than 130 Black men were arrested that summer. Vesey and 34 others were hanged, and another 37 were banished.
In 1976, the Bull Street home was added to the National Registry along with 33 other sites — all associated with prominent Black Americans, including Duke Ellington and Jackie Robinson, according to a National Park Services release.
“That place is really the first effort to recognize Vesey in in any way,” said Professor Bernard Powers, the city’s premiere historian of Black history. “If it’s not the very first, it would be probably the one of the first two efforts to recognize this important historical actor in the city of Charleston.”
Around the same time, Dorothy Wright’s painting of Vesey was hung in — and stolen from — the Gaillard Center; it eventually reappeared after a reward was offered.
An 18-year effort to honor Vesey culminated in 2014 with the unveiling of a life-sized monument to the man in Hampton Park.
There are architectural historians who do not believe Vesey ever lived at the home that still stands at 56 Bull Street, though “they understand that he lived nearby,” Powers said.
Tool markings from circular saws and modern cut nails date the house’s construction to around 1830, after Vesey was executed, according to a book by Lissa Felzer about Charleston Freedman’s cottages, of which the Bull Street house is one of the earliest examples.
Many renovations and updates to the home have occurred over the years, including additions after 1840 and around the turn of the 20th century, according to Felzer.
Despite the discrepancies, it doesn’t lessen the home’s historical significance in Powers’ eyes. Nor would a modest addition.
“Even if that is not the exact building, it is the vestige of Vesey’s imprint on that street because he lived on that street very nearby,” Powers said.
“The more unobtrusive the addition will be, the more it will be acceptable, I think, to the public at large, and certainly those who have a have a real interest in that location, meaning preservationists and people who are interested in the history of Charleston, and especially Black history,” he continued.
Others disagree. Alphonso Brown, who owns and runs Gullah Tours, said the home is one of the most popular spots on his guided tours focused on Black and Gullah history.
“It has become a landmark and should remain as historic as possible,” he said.
He believes those who downplay whether Vesey lived there are those who want to erase the uncomfortable history that comes with his legacy.
The Board of Zoning Appeals will re-hear the request for the rear addition in September.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
