1 Cooper Street

Photo provided by Susan Williams

by Susan Millar Williams, Ph. D. 

 

The beautiful Art Deco-style building that is now the St. Julian Devine Community Center was built as the city incinerator in the midst of the Great Depression. This photograph appeared in the 1936 Charleston City Yearbook. Charleston was proud of having moved forward to what was then believed to be a clean, modern, efficient form of garbage disposal.

 

Note that East Bay Street ended just north of the building. The large earth berms that are still visible on that side of the building were constructed to support a long ramp that led up to bays where trash was dumped into the burners. The ramp necessitated another change: the mules that had once hauled garbage carts were replaced by gasoline-powered trucks. At the time this picture was taken, there was only one smokestack.

 

The incinerator never performed as well as city officials had hoped. It produced polluting smoke, and when large quantities of damp material came in, like melon rinds or large dead animals, the fires tended to go out. By 1955 the city had moved on to other means of trash disposal.

What to know more?

• For information about the St. Julian Devine Community Center.
• For information about the city’s experiments with incinerators and a description of related historic records.