The Dock Street Theatre and Planter's Hotel
- Kendall John
- Jun 21, 2024
- 8 min read
Updated: Jun 24, 2024
For over 280 years, the southwest corner of Church and Queen Streets has not only survived the many eras of Charleston but has also been a major player in its history. The Dock Street Theatre was first constructed in 1735 and was the third building in North America to be used as a European-style theater. Later, the site served as one of the city's most famous antebellum hotels known as the Planter's Hotel. The property's long history has been interrupted several times by destruction, rebuilding, neglect, and rebranding, but time and again it has been revived by the community.
The First Dock Street Theatre
On February 12, 1736, the Dock Street Theatre hosted its inaugural performance, "The Recruiting Officer," written in 1706 by George Farquhar. This was also the first professional play to be performed in New York City four years prior [1].
Four years after being built, the Dock Street Theatre appeared as "The Theatre" on a map by George Hunter.
It is believed that multiple fires destroyed the wooden theatre throughout the 18th century, and it was rebuilt each time until 1754. Sometime after this, a large house was built on the lot with the remains of the Dock Street Theatre buried beneath it.
The Hotel's Owners
The Planter's Hotel was established by Scottish immigrants Alexander Calder (1773-1849) and his wife, Priscilla Calder (1773-1839). The two arrived in Charleston sometime in the late 1700s and married in 1797 [1]. Mr. Calder originally worked as a cabinetmaker and merchant before adding hotel ownership to his list of professions around the turn of the century. From what can be inferred from newspaper advertisements, the couple opened their first boarding house in 1803 on Sullivan's Island, followed by a second location on the corner of Meeting and Queen Streets in 1806.
In 1809, Alexander Calder bought the house “whereon a theatre once stood” where the Planter's Hotel would reside for over a century afterward [2]. The hotel would eventually expand west along the city block to encompass its stables and six buildings with several rooms for lodging, dining, playing billiards, society meetings, and more.
While the Calders were the primary owners of their franchise, they had help throughout the years from other proprietors. One was Horatio Gates Street, who took over hotel operations from 1829 to 1835 while the Calders stayed in Europe.
After the deaths of Mrs. Priscilla Calder in 1839 and Mr. Alexander Calder in 1849, the hotel passed through several different hands. Around 1856, the establishment was known as both the Planter’s Hotel and the Calder House in their memory.
The Guests
The hotel was patronized by wealthy white tourists visiting the city and planters coming in from rural parts of the state during the social and horseracing seasons. It offered long and short-term boarding with many people conducting business out of the hotel, as evidenced by numerous 19th-century newspaper advertisements. It also frequently served as a venue for different local societies to meet.
Many notable guests stayed at the Planter's Hotel, including Junius Brutus Booth (1796-1852), the father of actor Edwin Booth (1833-1893), and actor and assassin John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865). Junius Brutus Booth was a theatre actor who performed in Charleston 59 times between 1820-1860 [3]. He suffered from alcoholism and potentially from a mental illness that caused fits of violent outbursts. During a stay at the Planter's Hotel in March 1838, Booth struck his sleeping colleague, Thomas Flynn, with an andiron; an attack which made the papers.
More guests of interest include the ancestors of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: H.L. Roosevelt and Edwin Delano. According to records in a private collection, the two allegedly stayed at the Planter's in 1839. This connection was written about in 1936 during FDR's presidency and the WPA's restoration of the theatre [4].
The Hotel and Slavery
While the Planter's Hotel was a center of society and wealth for its white guests, the hotel meant something very different for Black Charlestonians. The hotel was a site for the sale of human beings, as advertised by its patrons in local papers. Additionally, the Calders enslaved several people throughout the years, as evidenced by U.S. Census data, slave schedules, bills of sale of enslaved humans, and newspaper ads for fugitives of slavery. Alexander Calder died in 1849, and in his final estate inventory, three enslaved people were cited: John, Mary, and Rose [5].
The identities and total number of human beings enslaved by Calder are largely unknown, as is the number of Black people who were at the hotel. In addition to relying upon the labor of those personally enslaved by Calder, the hotel was also staffed with enslaved persons who were "leased out" by their enslaver, with most, if not all, of the generated profit going to their captor.
One of these enslaved laborers was Robert Smalls (1839-1915), the famous self-liberated naval pilot and politician. In 1862 he stole the Planter, the Confederate ship he was enslaved on, and drove himself, his family, and others to freedom. Years before this heroic act, Smalls was a waiter at the Planter's Hotel for six months. He was 12 years old and earned $5/month paid to his enslaver [6]. One can glean what it was like working at the Planter's Hotel from this description found in a biography on Smalls:
“Waiting on tables and carrying trays up the narrow stairs to the bedrooms was harder than the outdoor life of a lamplighter. Now a damask napkin was slung over Robert’s arm and in his hands he carried a brimming soup tureen or a bottle of rich red claret. All day long and until late at night it was ‘Boy, fetch this,’ ‘Boy, tote that,’ and sometimes ‘Clumsy boy, can’t you watch out!’ [7]
The Hotel and Indentured Servants
In addition to relying on the labor of the enslaved, the Planter's Hotel also employed an apprentice from the Charleston Orphan House to help. During the late 1820s and early 1830s, Mr. and Mrs. Calder took a trip to Europe and left Horatio Gates Street as the proprietor. According to the Charleston Directory, Street had experience with several businesses before working with the Calders, including running a grocery store and a coffee house.
Not only was Street an enslaver of multiple people he likely employed at the Planter's during his charge, but he also applied to the Charleston Orphan House to bind out a child as an apprentice innkeeper. The Charleston Orphan House was America's first public orphanage. Established in 1790, it took in the city's poor and orphaned white children.
In 1825, Street applied to the Charleston Orphan House requesting two boys be indentured as innkeepers. One application was accepted- Henry Shoulters (born c. 1811). He began working for Street when he was about 14, with his apprenticeship expiring in 1832, when he was to be 21 [8]. No records have survived that describe his life at the Planter's Hotel, and the boy disappears from public records until the 1880s when he reemerged as an adult in California.
The Calders would return to Charleston during the 1830s and Street would go back to working his many businesses.
Decline
After the death of Alexander Calder in 1849, the Planter's Hotel changed ownership several times for the next two decades. Despite this, business seemed to continue successfully, as the hotel was appraised in 1854 to be worth $55,000 (the equivalent of over $2 million in 2023) [9]. However, the Civil War would ravage the Southern landscape and economy, and the golden age of the Planter's Hotel ended. To stay afloat during Reconstruction, the hotel needed to downsize, and in 1867 they auctioned off much of their furniture.
After the Civil War and Emancipation, Black farmers came to Charleston from the countryside hoping for a new life and opportunities. Some continued their journey to Northern cities during what is now called the Great Migration. Meanwhile, those who stayed in the city were limited to inhabiting the crowded, aging buildings of Reconstruction Charleston. Among these disintegrating apartments were the remains of the Planter's Hotel. Black and impoverished people predominantly populated the neighborhood where the former theatre and hotel lived. The conditions of the hotel-turned-tenements worsened after the Earthquake of 1886, which further destroyed the area [9].
But in Charleston, life finds a way. During the 1890s, the old Planter's Hotel continued to house the poor while also being the home of the Charleston Employment Agency, as well as a kindergarten run by the Christian Women's Temperance Union [10, 11].
The hotel continued as low-income housing during the 1890s, as an article from 1898 states that "the inmates of the Planter's Hotel are all poor and many of them aged-people..." [12].
The tenement apartments that now dominated the neighborhood would continue to crumble into the early 20th century. By 1928, one year before the stock market would crash and begin the Great Depression, the Planter's Hotel was officially abandoned.
A few years later, in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration to aid the American people during the Great Depression. One of these WPA projects would include resurrecting the Dock Street Theatre for white Charleston. It should be noted that at this time, racial segregation was legally enforced by Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws, preventing people of color from patronizing the theatre. Many of these laws would not be reversed until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Return of the Theatre
Work began at the Dock Street Theatre in February of 1935 by historic preservationist and architect Albert Simons, his partner Samuel Lapham, and advised by Asheville architect Douglas D. Ellington. The firm Simons & Lapham was founded in 1920 and was crucial to the historic preservation efforts taken in 20th-century Charleston. Albert Simons discussed the project in a News & Courier article titled “Architect Tells History of Project.” In this article, he outlines the restoration process and thanked others involved, including artisan plasterer John Smith. Smith was the only Black laborer to be acknowledged [13].
The restored venue was dedicated in 1937 with its first show being "The Recruiting Officer" by George Farquhar, just as it was in 1737 and attendees came dressed in colonial-era attire to celebrate. There was much excitement for its return, locally and nationally, and many articles were published in local papers and even Life magazine.
Digging Up Dock Street
Despite the immense amount of money put into the project, the theatre would quickly fall into disrepair. A letter from 1952 included that the Dock Street Theatre had "gone to pieces" in the last 15 years due to lack of upkeep [14]. While some minor repairs were arranged during the remainder of the 20th century, such as re-roofing and painting, the next major renovation would come in 2010.
In 1973, the Dock Street Theatre was added to the National Register of Historic Places
with the assistance of Albert Simons, who sent research materials to support this nomination [15].
In 2010, the City of Charleston committed to restoring the theater again, and it was the perfect time to conduct an archaeological survey of the area while it was closed for renovation. Spearheaded by The Charleston Museum, the team discovered the privy from the original theatre, buried since 1754.
The privy contents unearthed layers of history attached to the theatre and hotel. The discovery of colonial-era pottery, tobacco pipes, glass, food, and flowers allowed the team to learn more about early Charleston, its inhabitants, their lives, and their society [16].
Conclusion
The history of the theatre-turned-hotel-turned-theatre parallels Charleston’s journey through time: its British colonial origins and emerging Lowcountry identity, it's antebellum prosperity and Reconstruction decline, its artistic Renaissance, its place in Black history, the way it charms locals and tourists, it all happens here.
Today, the Dock Street Theatre continues to write its history while it houses the Charleston Stage and events for the Spoleto USA Festival, MOJA Festival, the Charleston Literary Festival, and more
Works Cited
[1] “Matrimony Notice,” City Gazette, February 15, 1797.
[2] John Ward to Alexander Calder, Conveyance of a lot, 17 January 1809, Charleston County Register of Deeds, book B8: 90-91.
[3] Hoole, W. Stanley, The Ante-Bellum Charleston Theatre (Tuscaloosa (Al.): University of Alabama Press, 1946).
[4] “Roosevelt Connections May Have Registered at Planters Hotel,” The Charleston Evening Post, March 24, 1936.
[5] "South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes, 1671-1977," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939L-JD9H-3L?cc=1919417&wc=M6NW-1NG%3A210905601%2C211140701: 21 May 2014), Charleston > Inventories, Appraisements, Sales, 1844-1850, Vol. B > image 284 of 311; citing Department of Archives and History, Columbia.
[6] Edward A. Miller, Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress, 1839-1915, Paperback edition (Columbia, S.C.: University Of South Carolina Press, 2008).
[7] Okon Edet Uya, “From Service to Servitude: Robert Smalls, 1839-1915.”
[8] Indenture Books, 1790-1949, Records of the Commissioners of the Charleston Orphan House, 1790-1959, City of Charleston Records, Charleston County Public Library, Charleston, S.C.
[9] “Records of Earthquake Damages,” Survey (Atlanta, G.A.: Winham & Lester Publishers, 1886).
[10] “Help Wanted - All Persons,” Charleston News and Courier, October 16, 1893.
[11] “The Kindergarten Association,” Evening Post, December 24, 1896.
[12] “Aid for the Destitute,” Evening Post, September 13, 1898.
[13] Albert Simons, “Dock St. Theater, Planters Hotel Add to City’s Architectural Wealth: Architect Tells Project History,” Charleston News and Courier, November 21, 1937.
[14] Committee on Public Education, Meeting Minutes (Charleston, S.C.: City of Charleston, City Council, August 19, 1952), City of Charleston Records Management.
[15] Albert Simons to Charles E. Lee, “Renovations of the Dock Street Theatre,” Letter, August 31, 1972, J. Palmer Gaillard Mayoral Papers, 1935-1978, Box 2, Folder OS-14, City of Charleston Records Management.
[16] Martha Zierden et al., “The Dock Street Theatre: Archaeological Discorvery and Exploration,” Archaeological survey, Archaeological Contributions (Charleston, S.C.: The Charleston Museum, March 2009), https://www.charlestonmuseum.org/research/archaeology-reports/.