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The first tall building erected in Charleston sits empty on Broad Street, a victim of water and time. Everyone was ordered out of the Peoples Building on Aug. 19 after an engineer determined the steel support beam in one corner of the building had so much rust damage that the outer wall was cracking under the pressure of weight it wasn't designed to carry.
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Charleston's salty air mixed with moisture work in tandem to eat away the steel or wood supports that keep high-rises and houses here upright. The president of the owners' association for the building called any suggestion the structure is in danger of falling "greatly exaggerated." "There's no risk of collapse, and certainly the integrity of the building is solid," said John Witty, the association president whose Advantage Media Group is housed inside.
"The building's been there for 100 years, and we as owners, trustees of that, want to make sure it's here for another 100 years," he added. "Like anything that ages, you have to take care of it." Owners still don't know the total cost of repairs, but Witty said he expects the initial support structures to be in place and the building to reopen within the next couple weeks.
Peoples National Bank in downtown Charleston, shown sometime between 1910 and 1920. First printed by Detroit Publishing Co. During its construction in 1910, the eight-story palace with marble interiors was designed as the headquarters for Peoples National Bank.
Run by R. Goodwyn Rhett, who also served as mayor, the building was seen as a symbol of Charleston's economic reawakening after the Civil War. Today it testifies to the more subtle dangers of climate change in coastal cities.
Large hurricanes and frequent flooding are the more obvious consequences. They overshadow the slow, steady attack of saltwater from the sea and sky that can threaten drinking supplies, endanger fragile ecosystems, ruin farmlands. And crumble buildings.
South Carolina has hundreds of coastal high-rises in harm's way. We mapped them. Workers for months have been replacing old windows that had been allowing water inside.
The problems with the steel support beam on the northwest corner were first detected during an inspection after Tropical Storm Debby to determine whether the new windows had withstood the storm. The steel beam was severely corroded near the top of the building, Witty said, with the damage getting less severe on lower levels. That rust distribution means it's more likely that rainwater is entering the building from above versus floodwater intruding from below.
Witty said the new windows should help prevent leaks. The leader of The Historic Charleston Foundation said problems with the steel beams began years ago after someone removed the cornice from the edge of the roof. Cornices are largely ornamental, but they also help prevent water from entering a building.
The penthouse on the top two floors of the Peoples Building in downtown Charleston sold for $12 million in 2020. The building houses seven condos on its upper floors and several businesses below. The condo owners typically leave Charleston during the summer, and none were living there when the evacuation was ordered, Witty said.
The penthouse, with a 3,100 square-foot patio overlooking the city, sold in 2020 for $12 million, the highest price anyone had paid for a home in the city at the time. It's undergoing renovations that allowed for a better view of the building's insides than engineers might otherwise have had. Charleston's condo castle fetches record $12M for residential property on peninsula Even from the sidewalk below, the building almost smells like money.
Two display leopards are perched by the entryway. The granite façade on the lower two floors gives way to yellow brick and terra cotta above that in the right sunlight look gilded. As the building rose above the city in 1910, some residents worried it would ruin Charleston's character and skyline.
"It's funny how you go back and read accounts from the community, and they're freaking out about a lot of the same things we talk about still today, which is traffic and cars and tourists and development," said Winslow Hastie, president and CEO of the Historic Charleston Foundation. "So there was, I think, some hand-wringing going on while the same time, there was this sort of excitement, too, that this was a turning point in the city." When President William Taft visited Charleston later that year, his tour of the city included an elevator ride to the rooftop to look out over the city.
In some tellings of the story, Taft said the building hadn't ruined the skyline, but even if it had, the view from the top made up for it. Panoramic views of the Charleston skyline can be seen from the roof of the two-story penthouse atop the Peoples Building in downtown Charleston. Also under construction at the time in Charleston: The low battery, a sea wall designed to protect the city from the water.
After the building opened in 1911, people lined up for the chance to ride the city's first steel-caged elevator in what, at the time, qualified as the city's first skyscraper. It remains a stop on walking tours and horse carriage rides through downtown and over the decades has served as a popular picture on postcards. Predictions that the Peoples Building would mark a new boom in Charleston were overstated.
Even today, the building towers over all of its neighbors on Broad Street. The top floors are visible past the corner of King and Broad to the west and from parts of Waterfront Park to the east. There are a total of 53 buildings in the city taller than six stories, according to a survey of tall buildings the city completed in December 2022.
The survey was spurred by the evacuation of a high-rise near Myrtle Beach because of failing support beams. Is corroded Horry County condo an omen for the SC coast? The Peoples Building is the only one of those to be closed for repairs since then, said Ken Granata, Charleston's chief building official. The city threatened to force residents to vacate the city's tallest building last year over concerns the condo association wasn't moving quickly enough to repair damaged support columns.
Dockside, situated on the harbor near the South Carolina Aquarium, was stabilized, but repairs there are ongoing. A Charleston parking deck closed last year over similar concerns. At the time, it was one of more than a dozen in need of an estimated $11 million in repairs.
A Charleston parking deck closed due to risk of collapse. Over a dozen need $11M in repairs. The worst-case scenario played out in Florida in 2021 when a 12-story condo collapsed and killed 98 people.
The tragedy raised concerns up and down the coast about tall structures near the ocean. Using elevator permits and storm surge maps, The Post and Courier last year found more than 500 tall structures close enough to South Carolina's coast to face heightened risk of saltwater corrosion. Among those structures — primarily high-rises along with dozens of parking garages — about 230 were at least 30 years old.
A building's age, proximity to the coast and building materials are among the main factors in determining how well it will weather the growing risk of storms. Nearly three-quarters of all major tidal floods recorded in the past century in Charleston came in the last decade. And heavy storms across the Southeast produce 27 percent more rainfall than they did in 1958.
They are predicted to get worse, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. State law doesn't require buildings to be inspected once they're approved for occupancy. And while Charleston took stock of its high-rises, the city stopped short of any mandatory inspection program similar to ones put in place in Florida.
Granata said building owners should pay close attention to any changes they notice so problems can be caught in time to avoid disaster. "Listen to your buildings. Look at your buildings.
They will talk to you and tell you what's going on," he said. "Sometimes a little crack in the wall is just a little crack and movement of no concern. Sometimes it can be more, so take it all seriously enough to investigate.
" The lobby inside the the Peoples Building on Broad Street..
