The little girl in the red dress was the first image that snared me as my eyes wandered among the artwork on the auction house wall. Her with the brown face, standing on a sidewalk in the bottom left corner of a lovely watercolor.
Then I saw the two women, also African American, off to her right near a fence, face to face, seemingly gossiping. I’m always on the lookout for artwork with images of African Americans and even more so if they tell a story.
And this painting was schooling me about a street that was presumably in an African American neighborhood, with tidy sidewalks, well-kept houses and an old-model car parked near a curb. In the background stood a tall building with columns and a spire that resembled a church.
The painting was clearly signed in pencil: “Yancey.” As I always do, I pulled out my smartphone and searched for the words “Yancey artist Charleston,” knowing that the name was so common that it’d be impossible to find the artist. Nothing turned up of value, so perhaps he/she was a local artist who painted for the love of it, like so many others I come across at auction all the time.
The painting gave no hint of where this street could be located, so I was stumped. As I sat through the auction, not finding much of anything else to bid on, I kept watch over it. I was not around when it came up for sale, but I left an absentee bid and got it for a small price.
Once I had the painting in my hands, I turned it over to the back and saw that someone – either the artist or the buyer – had used brown cardboard as a backing. That is a no-no, but I find it quite often on artwork framed by artists themselves. Over time, cardboard discolors the paper.
Then in the lower bottom right corner, I saw a handwritten inscription, not from the artist but the buyer.
“Magazine Street
Charleston, SC
Purchased May, 1967”
Now, I had a place, and it seems to be one that I keep stumbling upon. Once, I picked up a poster for a 1999 Lowcountry Blues Bash in Charleston that I donated to a silent auction. Another time, I learned about a railroad line owned by African Americans that operated in the city in the late 19th century. A 1947 jazz album by James P. Johnson led me to the origin of the song (and dance) “Charleston,” which he and Cecil Mack are credited with writing. I retrieved a sweet little Metropolitan Museum of Art “Porgy and Bess” music box from among some other items at auction.
Charleston was certainly not on my mind when I saw the watercolor. But now that I had a location of the street, I wanted to know the name of that majestic church in the background, which reminded me of the chapel at the college I attended, and that neighborhood from 1967.
I Googled Magazine Street, but couldn’t find a church that matched its appearance, but I did learn about the Old Charleston Jail and the history of the street.
The Charleston County Jail, at 21 Magazine Street, is pretty well known in the city, having operated from 1802 to 1939. A free man, Denmark Vesey was held in the tower of the jail after he and his followers were arrested for planning a slave rebellion in 1822. They were betrayed by a house slave. The others were also held in the jail, and the trial took place there. Now a tourist site, the jail was located on a square that at one time held a hospital, poor house and a workhouse that was used to hold runaway slaves. Charleston itself was one of the largest slave trading ports in the South.
Magazine Street itself was the namesake of the city’s powder magazines, the first of which was built in the early 18th century. These storehouses held the city’s supply of gunpowder.
Getting past the history of the street, I was still curious about the building in the painting. So I emailed an old newspaper buddy Herb Frazier, a native of Charleston who’s settled in his hometown.
“The painting looks like St. John’s Lutheran Church and a street scene if you are looking east on Magazine,” he wrote back. “Can’t tell you much more than that off the top of my head. The Jenkins Orphanage was once located on Franklin St. It was home to the famous Jenkins Orphanage brass band that produced a corps of fine musicians in the early 1900s.
“Google that and you’ll find a cache of interesting stories.” I did, and found a wonderful and inspiring story of self-determination. The founder, Rev. Daniel Joseph Jenkins, also ran a Charleston Rescue Home for girls around the same time on Magazine Street.
Herb forwarded my inquiry to others familiar with the city’s history, one of whom agreed that it looked like St. John’s church and another who dropped a story about one of the powder magazines.
“It’s very close to The Powder Magazine (about 3 blocks west), and at one time there were a series of arsenals along that leg of Magazine St – hence the name,” said R. Alan Stello Jr., director of The Powder Magazine museum. “There is an intriguing story from May of 1780 when one of the magazines on that stretch exploded and created about 200 casualties.”
Armed with the identity of the building, I Googled St. John’s Lutheran Church, found a photo, and saw that it was the church in the watercolor. St. John’s is the city’s oldest Lutheran church, dating back to the early 19th century.
I also removed the painting from the frame and on the back of it found an unfinished watercolor. The artist perhaps had started that one but changed his/her mind.
As for the neighborhood in the painting, I wondered how much of it existed anymore. Was it once a segregated African American neighborhood, since the artist had painted the people as such? Did this community of people move out when gentrification stepped in?
I’d love to know. If you recognize this area of Charleston and have info about the neighborhood in 1967, please share it in the Comments box below.
