City Directories and History: CATFISH ROW
Constructed circa 1783; restoration 1928-30
“A larger, three-story version of the Hendricks tenements, this stucco building achieved fame as the setting for DuBose Heyward’s famous novel Porgy and the subsequent libretto. Heyward knew the building well, not only because he lived in the next block but because he had previously rented the dependency across the street at 90 Church Street. Along with the Hendricks tenements, this structure was formerly known as Cabbage Row, but Heyward dubbed it “Catfish Row,” its appellation thereafter. Retaining its original fenestration, particularly its early- nineteenth-century shop fronts, the central passageway arch still boasts a late-eighteenth-century wrought-iron lunette with scrollwork and central pendant.
Occupied for decades after the Civil War as a dense rooming house for as many as one hundred African Americans, the building was purchased in 1928 by the wife of landscape architect Loutrel Briggs. Briggs restored the exterior, adding old woodwork to the upper interiors for rental apartments and renovating the gutted shells of the flanking rear outbuildings as new units.”
Information from: The Buildings of Charleston – J.H. Poston for the Historic Charleston Foundation, 1997
Other sources: Charleston Tax Payers of Charleston, SC in 1860-61, Dwelling Houses of Charleston by Alice R.H. Smith – 1917, Charleston 1861 Census Schedule, and a 1872 Bird’s Eye View of Charleston, S.C. The Hist. Charleston Foundation may also have additional data at: Past Perfect
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