Urban Planning of Charleston

 

Urban Planning of Chas. – Streets, sidewalks, drains and treeⁱ

i Urban Planning of Chas. – Streets, sidewalks, drains and tree

In the 1670s, the provincial government paid for a surveyor to lay out the town streets on the ground, but did little else with the streets for many decades. This was a frontier settlement in the late seventeenth century, and the colonial legislature expected citizens to shoulder much of the early work. In April 1685, for example, South Carolina’s provincial government ratified a law requiring properties owners in urban Charleston to clear “all bushes, stumps, young pines, and weeds” from the street in front of their respective properties, and, at their own expense, to keep such streets clear in the future.[2] Once the streets were cleared, it was time to create sidewalks. In October 1698, the provincial government ordered the owners of private property in urban Charleston to create six-foot-wide sidewalks in front of their respective houses and lots using crushed oyster shells.[3] In March 1735, the provincial government began laying the town’s first drain down the center of the east end of Broad Street, and required abutting property owners to contribute to the project.[4] Beyond these acts, and the creation of a few subsequent drains in the town’s principal streets, local government did nothing to protect, pave, maintain, repair, or beautify the streets of urban Charleston before the year 1750. If there were any trees standing along the margins of the streets at that time, they were planted and maintained by the adjacent property owners who benefitted from their shade.

In the late winter of 1750, the South Carolina Commons House of Assembly was contemplating the need for a law to regulate the streets of urban Charleston. After listening to complaints from citizens for many years, the House appointed several members to form a committee to make recommendations. Their subsequent report led to a discussion of the most necessary points, and the House resolved to appoint a board of commissioners to oversee the streets. The House then ordered the gentlemen responsible for drafting the bill to “insert a clause . . . to empower the commissioners . . . to plant trees in such of the streets in the said town as they shall think necessary.”[5] Why, you might ask, would the members of South Carolina’s elected assembly in 1750 recommend the planting of trees in the street of urban Charleston? They did not record a reason at the time, but we can extrapolate a few ideas from later public discussions of this topic.

Mature trees provided shade from the intense rays of the sun, for example. The pedestrians using Charleston’s sidewalks appreciated this cooling relief on hot summer days. Their upright trunks also helped to define the boundary between the central carriageway and the marginal footpaths or sidewalks of our unpaved streets. The placement of trees along the margins of the streets, preferably in straight lines and planted at regular intervals, also contributed to the aesthetic beauty of the town. By 1750, Charleston was no longer a frontier community, and its inhabitants were likely eager to create a visual impression of maturity and urbane sophistication. Admiring the great towns and cities of Europe, especially the newest and most fashionable neighborhoods of London, the elite citizens of South Carolina knew that barren streets in their capital town reflected poorly on their civic aspirations.

Despite their desire to line the streets of Charleston with rows of elegant trees, the members of the provincial government were unwilling to tax themselves and their neighbors to pay for such civic luxuries. They would not actively commission such plantings, but they would passively encourage the citizens to do it at their own, private expense. The final draft of the street bill, ratified on the last day of May, 1750, created a board of commissioners to superintend Charleston’s urban streetscape. We’ll save a full discussion of their legacy for a future conversation, but for the moment we’ll just follow the trees. The 1750 law included the following important clause: “That it shall and may be lawful for the owner or proprietor of any lands fronting any of the streets in the said town to plant such trees with the consent of the said commissioners but not otherwise as they shall think convenient and also to enclose such trees to prevent their being destroyed.”

The street law of 1750 recognized that property owners abutting the streets desired to plant trees in front of their respective properties, in the shared right-of-way. Rather than pay for such trees, the provincial government would simply facilitate and regulate such planting through the board of street commissioners. Yes, you can plant a tree in front of your house, and build a little wooden box around it so horses don’t chew the bark, but that planting and box had to approved and regulated by the commissioners, who had the power to remove said tree if they thought it necessary. This 1750 requirement might seem invasive, but remember that we’re talking about the private alteration of a public space. It isn’t very different from a modern ordinance requiring a property owner to get municipal permission to plant, trim, or remove a tree standing in the public right-of-way.

In August 1764, The South Carolina General Assembly revised and expanded the statue for keeping clean the streets of urban Charleston. The new law included the same clause encouraging citizens to plant street trees under the supervision of the Commissioners of the Streets and added two new features to the urban streetscape. The commissioners were henceforth empowered to cause “posts to be fixed in any of the said principal streets, and footways [that is, sidewalks] levelled and paved for the safety and convenience of foot passengers.”[8]

The first part of this 1764 clause initiated the planting of wooden posts in rows along the edges of Charleston’s streets. Placed at intervals like bollards, these posts were intended to help define the boundary between the carriageway and the sidewalk and therefore protect the pedestrians from the faster-moving traffic in the street. The second innovation of the revised street statute of 1764 was the paving of the sidewalks. Shortly after its ratification, in October 1764, the Commissioners of Streets advertised in the Charleston newspaper soliciting bids “for paving a regular footway (with good and well burnt bricks, laid flat in mortar) on each side of the principal streets of the said town.” The commissioners also announced their desire to procure a large number of “cedar posts, eight feet long, and six inches square.” Property owners who chose to lay such brick pavements at their own expense in front of their own homes were free to do so, as in 1698, but only “under [the] inspection of the commissioners.”

In contrast to many government-funded projects in the early history of South Carolina, contemporary evidence suggests that the Commissioners of Streets acted quickly to begin paving Charleston’s sidewalks with brick. By the end of December 1764, Charleston’s street commissioners were warning citizens to keep their horses, hand-carts, and wheelbarrows off of the “the new-laid pavements” on each side of the town’s principal streets.[10] In late May 1765, Philadelphia merchant Pelatiah Webster walked the streets of Charleston and took note of the solid sidewalks. The town’s sandy streets, Webster observed, “are not paved except the footways within the posts, ab[ou]t 6 feet wide, which are paved with brick in the principal streets.”[11] Beginning in late 1764 in streets like Broad, Meeting, East Bay, Tradd, and Queen, the Commissioners of Street continued paving the sidewalks of smaller streets in subsequent years.

This slight diversion into sidewalk history might seem unrelated to our focus on street trees, but the two stories overlap—eventually. From the earliest legal mention of trees in the streets of Charleston in 1750 to the beginning of the twentieth century, the trees were planted along the edge of the carriageway, outside of the sidewalk. The sidewalks or footpaths were exclusively for pedestrian use, and no obstacles or obstructions were allowed.

As Pelatiah Webster noted in 1765, the town’s paved sidewalks were along the edges of the streets, “within the posts.” Charleston’s early street trees and wooden posts were, therefore, interchangeable features intended to create a visual and physical line of demarcation between the carriageway and the footpath. The wooden posts served a useful purpose but weren’t very attractive and didn’t last long. Many were eventually replaced by iron posts, stone bollards, and even old cannon. Well-maintained trees, on the other hand, endured for many years while providing cooling shade to passing pedestrians and adding natural beauty to the streetscape.