Broad Street hosted the country’s largest domestic slave auctions

Through the first half of the nineteenth century, many of the buildings on this block operated as auction houses and private sale rooms. The firm of William Payne and Sons was probably the busiest auction house in the Lowcountry between 1803 and 1834. Payne brokered the sale of more than 9,200 enslaved people from Charleston and the surrounding countryside, sometimes acting as an agent for the City Sheriff to settle court-ordered debts. In February 1819, Payne carried out a sale of 367 people belonging to the estate of planter John Ball, valued at about $6.5 million in 2021 dollars. After Payne died, brokers Thomas Hume, Isaac Bennett, and Roland Rhett continued the trade at the same address until the Civil War.

From 1828 to 1840, James Jervey, Morton A. Waring, and Alonzo J. White ran another slave trading firm on this stretch, close to the banks and insurance companies that financed the business. On 24 February 1835, Jervey, Waring, and White began the largest known domestic slave sale in United States history on the north side of the Old Exchange Building. The death of John Ball Jr and the breakup of his plantations on the upper Cooper River put 600 people up for auction. Newspaper advertisements listed boatmen, coopers, drivers, and skilled rice workers among them.

Most of the people sold along Broad Street were born in the United States, separated from their families and home communities by the domestic market. The men who organized the auctions were regarded in Charleston as gentlemen of property and standing.

In 1856, the city banned auctions of enslaved people and other goods at the Exchange. Indoor auctions moved elsewhere, and Ryan's Mart, between Queen and Chalmers Streets, became the main downtown sale site.