Restoring the Dock Street Theatre: Cultural Production in New-Deal Era Charleston, South Carolina Stephanie E

University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 6-30-2016 Restoring the Dock Street Theatre: Cultural Production in New-Deal Era Charleston, South Carolina Stephanie E. Gray University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the Public History Commons Recommended Citation Gray, S. E.(2016). Restoring the Dock Street Theatre: Cultural Production in New-Deal Era Charleston, South Carolina. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/3532 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RESTORING THE DOCK STREET THEATRE: CULTURAL PRODUCTION IN NEW-DEAL ERA CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA by Stephanie E. Gray Bachelor of Arts Mount Holyoke College, 2013 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts in Public History College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2016 Accepted by: Lauren Sklaroff, Director of Thesis Marjorie Spruill, Reader Lacy Ford, Senior Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright by Stephanie E. Gray, 2016 All Rights Reserved ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, my deepest gratitude goes to my advisor, Dr. Lauren Sklaroff, and my second reader, Dr. Marjorie Spruill. I am thankful for the great enthusiasm they have shown for this project and helpful feedback they have provided. They both have inspired me to read more, research smarter, and write better. The final version of this thesis also has been enriched by insightful comments from Dr. Yulian Wu and my fellow students in her material culture course, as well as my classmates in Dr. Spruill’s research seminar in the fall of 2015. Additionally, I would like to thank Dr. Robert Weyeneth and Dr. Lydia Brandt, both of whom have been steadfast advisors and supporters of my research interest in the built environment throughout the course of my graduate career. They have instilled in me a love of architecture and historic preservation, as well as a desire to share why place matters with a larger public. I am also grateful for the guidance of the librarians and archivists at the South Caroliniana Library and the South Carolina Historical Society who brought to my attention the resources that made this thesis possible. A multitude of thanks are owed to my encouraging fellow graduate students. To my friends who often have doubled as intellectual soundboards, Kayla Halberg, Sam King, and Robert Olguin, your ideas as well as your laughs have been equally invaluable sources of productivity. Special gratitude goes to my roommates (and fellow historians) over the years here in South Carolina– Kristie Dafoe, Diana Garnett, Janie Campbell, and iii Alyssa Constad – who have kept me in sound mind and health, for which I am extremely appreciative. iv ABSTRACT The Dock Street Theatre project, completed between the years 1935 and 1937 in Charleston, South Carolina, was a New Deal experiment in “historical restoration” funded by President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). Opening night of the restored theatre signified the transformation of the Old Planters’ Hotel, a dilapidated nineteenth-century resort built on the site of the original 1736 playhouse, into an architectural gem that resurrected the eighteenth-century theatre that was considered the cultural heart of colonial Charleston. The orchestrated recreation of the Dock Street Theatre resulted from the imperative of Charleston’s white elite to foment through architecture a tangible image of the city’s prosperous colonial and antebellum past. Albert Simons and Samuel Lapham, the project’s architects, utilized the built environment to craft a particular cultural identity of their city that promoted a romanticized view of Charleston as a bastion of the Old South. Two goals were embedded in the restoration of the theatre: to produce an architecturally sound space that resembled as closely as possible the original eighteenth-century theatre, and to physically encode in the built environment the legacy of Old Charleston. The relocation of architectural elements salvaged from a nearby nineteenth-century mansion, the Radcliffe- King House, to the restored theatre helped fabricate a visual and physical connection to Charleston’s past. Ultimately, the project fulfilled its aims to strengthen Charleston’s art identity as a regional theatre and to contribute to the architectural stock of a city whose v cultural elites were intent on maintaining, and, when possible, resurrecting a prosperous past in tangible form. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ iii ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................1 CHAPTER II: THE DOCK STREET THEATRE: RESURRECTING OLD CHARLESTON ...................8 CHAPTER III: SALVAGED GOODS: BETTER WITH AGE .........................................................40 CHAPTER IV: A “CAST OF SOCIALITE CHARLESTONIANS” ENJOY OPENING NIGHT ............56 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................66 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Entrance of the Planters’ Hotel .......................................................................10 Figure 2.2: Dock Street Theatre, exterior view..................................................................11 Figure 2.3: The Old Planters’ Hotel ...................................................................................13 Figure 2.4: Architectural sketches by Albert Simons ........................................................26 Figure 2.5: Movie Tormentor Sketch.................................................................................27 Figure 2.6: Simons and Lapham Architects’ drawing sheet 49 .......................................28 Figure 2.7: Architectural renderings of the reception hall and green room, and Church Street elevation...................................................................................................................29 Figure 2.8: Illustrations of Eighteenth-Century theatres....................................................32 Figure 2.9: Interior views of the Dock Street Theatre’s auditorium ..................................35 Figure 3.1: Newspaper illustration of the Planters’ Hotel .................................................37 Figure 3.2: Architectural plans of first and second floors of the Dock Street Theatre ......38 Figure 3.3: Radcliffe-King House’s Palladian window .....................................................41 Figure 3.4: Relocated architectural elements from Radcliffe-King House ........................44 Figure 3.5: Replica staircase in Dock Street Theatre’s lobby ............................................55 Figure 4.1: Federal Art Project’s stage backdrops for “The Recruiting Officer” ..............57 Figure 4.2: Invitation to the second opening night ............................................................59 Figure 4.3: Audience on opening night..............................................................................61 viii Figure 4.4: Act I, Scene I from “The Recruiting Officer” .................................................63 ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Many came early to inspect the theater and adjoining Planter’s Hotel. They marveled at the softlight in the green room. They inspected with curiosity the old musical instruments on display in glass cases. They wondered how craftsmen ever were able to fit the cypress woodwork so perfectly. They climbed the stairs, gossiped in the foyer, argued with check-room attendants and finally presented themselves and their tickets to the ushers, Citadel cadets and College of Charleston students, clad in Colonial costumes.1 On November 26, 1937, five hundred audience members enjoyed a performance of the eighteenth-century Restoration comedy “The Recruiting Officer” in Charleston’s newly restored Dock Street Theatre at 135 Church Street.2 Performed by the city’s Little Theatre acting troupe, the Footlight Players, the production was a reenactment of the same play that opened the original Dock Street Theatre exactly two hundred years before. This evening signified the successful transformation of the Planters’ Hotel, a dilapidated nineteenth-century hotel and restaurant built on the site of the 1736 playhouse, into an architectural gem. The restored building recreated an eighteenth-century theatre lost to fire three times over, but featured all the advantages twentieth-century modern technology could offer. The City of Charleston presented each guest in attendance with a souvenir folder that commemorated the theatre’s completion after three years of 1 R. M. Hitt, Jr., “City’s Culture Made Theater Gift Possible, Hopkins Says,” November 27, 1937, Scrapbook 1937, Dock Street Theatre Collection, 1937-1947, Manuscript I&OIb (Dock Street Theatre), South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina. 2 Restoration comedy refers to comedies

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