Ryan’s Mart at 6 Chalmers Street

Thomas Ryan, a city councilman, opened this site on July 1, 1856. He did not build it to start a new trade, but to hide an existing one. The city had just banned public slave auctions in the open air, so the business moved indoors and away from the view of the street.

The building in front of you was the salesroom. It was the entrance to a complex that ran through the entire block to Queen Street. Behind this wall stood a kitchen, an infirmary, a four-story jail for holding people before they were sold, and a large walled yard used as a pen. In 1859, a broker named Ziba B. Oakes bought the property and added the roof trussed across to the neighboring building, supported by eight-sided pillars. This structure is where he held his auctions.

For the last seven years of the trade, this was the primary downtown auction site. Local residents at the time called the complex Ryan's Mart or Ryan's jail. Sales continued here until about 1863. The business only ended in 1865 when the Union Army occupied Charleston and closed the mart for good.

The site is the last building still standing in South Carolina where enslaved people were sold. It remained in private hands for decades after the war. Miriam B. Wilson opened a museum in the old salesroom in 1938, and the property was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 2, 1975. The City of Charleston purchased the building in 1988 and reopened it as a municipal museum in 2007.

The front of the building is plastered smooth and measures 19 feet wide. It remains the only physical trace of the four buildings that once made up the Ryan's Mart complex.