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This portrait of St. Julian Devine now hangs on the second floor of the St. Julian Devine Community Center, just across from the elevator. by Susan Millar Williams, Ph. D.  Those who live and work on the East Side know the name St. Julian Devine—it’s the name of the community center located in the old city incinerator, on East Bay Street between Blake and Cooper Streets. But who was the man behind the name.  According to a plaque at the center, St. Julian Devine was born in Berkeley County on July 5, 1911 but moved to Charleston as a youngster because his father worked for the railroad. He was the seventh of eight children born to Frank and Sarah Wise Devine, and the only one to survive childhood. He attended Burke High School, married Priscilla Theresa Walton in 1935, and fathered ten children. He was active in the A.M.E. church and in several fraternal organizations. But St. Julian Devine’s most important claim to fame is that he served on the Charleston City Council from 19...

Hanover Street Garden, 2012 With the East Side fast becoming one of Charleston’s most desirable neighborhoods, it is hard to remember that it was once a place where the city relegated eyesores and polluters. Tanneries released foul odors and noxious liquids into its creeks and marshes. Hogs and cattle were slaughtered at “butcher pens” that supplied meat for the city market. Garbage carts dumped trash in the streets, slowly building up new land from the detritus of life downtown. The city dump, with its flocks of buzzards, gave way to an incinerator that spewed showers of ash. Industrial engines and locomotives alike belched clouds of smoke. In its heyday as an upscale suburb, Hampstead, as it was then known, boasted an expansive park and a handful of palatial homes. It even had a botanical garden, near the site of the now-vacant grocery store many Eastsiders still think of as the Piggly Wiggly. But for almost a century, Hampstead was also the place where Charleston warehoused its poor...

by Susan Millar Williams, Ph. D.  Approaching the Palmer Campus from East Bay Street, you can’t help but notice the railroad line along the Cooper River. In fact, most of the time you can’t see the river at all because the tracks are crowded with auto transport cars tagged with graffiti. Ruins of the Northeastern Railroad station. You may have seen articles recently about the Lowcountry Low Line, a proposed linear park that will run along one of those old railroad right-of-ways, between King and Meeting Streets. That long, narrow strip was once the path of the South Carolina Railroad. Other railroad lines also came through the East Side, including the Northeastern Railroad and the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. When the Charleston Museum published a history of the East Side in 1987, they titled it Between the Tracks .  The area grew up around railroads that carried goods and people in and out of the city. There was one passenger depot on Line Street, one on Mary, and anothe...

Palmer Campus in Downtown Charleston, South Carolina celebrated its 2017 Eastside Day Celebration during Spirit Week at Trident Technical College by recognizing retirees, college faculty and community allies by naming them as Pillars of Palmer for significant contributions to the college and the Eastside community. Listen to their stories regarding what the recognition meant to them. The videos and photographs of the honorees were produced by Trident Technical College students in the Film, Media and Visual Arts Division.    

    You can see our new portrait gallery honoring our Pillars of Palmer - faculty, staff, and community members who have contributed to the college and to the community.  You can see the physical exhibit by visiting our Library Commons on the Palmer Campus, and you can also read about it in our online exhibit .    Honoring the Past: Gerald Mackey We here at Trident Technical College seek to honor the past, for knowing where you come from helps you get where you’re going. Gerald Mackey embodies the history of these buildings we move through today. He started his career teaching African American students in the segregated CA Brown High School that created this campus. When Trident Technical College bought the building for its downtown campus, he eventually ended up running it. The TTC downtown Palmer Campus grew under his leadership.   Preserving for the Future:   Dr. Susan Millar Williams and Mary Edwards We here at Trident Technical College a...

  Created by Maureen Myers and her staff in the Palmer library, the Eastside Collection stands as an important research guide for students writing about their local community as well as for faculty developing curriculum that includes local history. It also allows us to celebrate the work of our faculty, staff, and students in doing research, sharing community resources, and educating the public about the importance of the Eastside community.  And it helps to demonstrate Trident Technical College's commitment to the community it serves.

by Dr. Susan Millar Williams Growing up in Arkansas in the 1960s, I thought of cigar boxes as a real treasure, and I often begged the local drugstore to let me have their discards. Most of the ones I managed to get hold of were made from cardboard printed to resemble wood grain, and they had once held Roi-Tans, which sold for five cents each. Little did I know then that I would someday work in Charleston, right across the street from the building that once housed the American Tobacco factory, where those boxes (and the cigars they contained) were made. One of the most famous brands associated with the factory was called the Cremo, and it gave the factory its local nickname, Cremo College. Roi-Tans and Cremos were marketed as more sanitary than other brands because they were made by machine and pre-drilled so that the smoker did not need to bite off the tips. Most boxes were designed to double as counter displays, so that merchants could prop them open like this and sell the contents in...

by Dr. Susan Millar Williams  We know that this handsome Adam-style house was built between 1802 and 1808 by someone whose last name was Belser, but it’s not clear whether his first name was Jacob or Christopher. It has come to be known as the Christopher Belser House, and also as Presqu’ile , a French word that means peninsula . It may have been designed by Gabriel Manigault, but again, no one is positive.  Archibald Grimke We do know for sure that it was owned (and expanded) by Henry Grimk é , brother of the famous Sarah and Angelina Grimk é , who had three sons by his slave Nancy Weston. One of them, Archibald Henry Grimk é , grew up to be a prominent lawyer and author.   A graduate of the freedmen's schools who went on to earn a degree from Harvard Law School, Archibald served as American Consul to the Dominican Republic from 1894 to 1898 and as a national vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  Another of Henry...