East Side History Series: Faber-Ward House 631 East Bay

This photograph was taken on May 17, 1958 as part of the Historic 

American Buildings Survey. The building then was in a sad state of disrepair.

by Susan Millar Williams, Ph D. 

Built in the 1830s by rice planter Henry Faber, this grand house was—like its neighbor across the street, Presqu'ile—built on a spit of high land along the river. Its uses since that time reflect Charleston’s turbulent history. Faber died at age 57 and was buried in St. Philip’s churchyard. His brother Joseph completed the house. Then he sold it to Joshua John Ward, sometimes called “the king of the rice planters.” Born at Brookgreen Plantation near Georgetown in 1800, Ward was the largest slaveholder in America during his lifetime. He was considered the greatest and most innovative of the antebellum rice planters, developing a long grain version of the famous Carolina Gold variety which, during its brief heyday, commanded the highest price of any type of rice on the world market. He also served as Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina from 1850 to 1852.  Ward also (briefly) owned Presqu’ile, which is also known as the Christopher Belser house.

Joshua John Ward

During and after the Civil War, while Union troops occupied Charleston, the Faber-Ward house, as it came to be called, was converted into a hotel for emancipated slaves. During the Jim Crow era, when white” hotels were not open to African-Americans, it again served as a hotel for black guests. The name of the hotel at this time, according to local lore, was The Hamitic, an obsolete ethnic designation, akin to the current term Semitic, that refers to African origins.  According to Alphonso Brown, in A Gullah Guide to History, the building a “house of ill-repute” in the 1940s and 50s, catering to seamen and others who worked along the nearby waterfront. If only we knew more about what happened in this house during all these seasons of its life! I wish someone would undertake to dig out more of its post-war history.

The house as it looks today.

The Historic Charleston Foundation bought the house in 1964. In 1969 it was set on fire by vandals, but the building survived. Today the main structure and its outbuildings are used as office space.

Want to take a quick look inside and see the spiral staircase that soars up to the cupola? Click on this YouTube video or watch at the top of the article.