126-year-old brick home in Charleston's South of Broad Neighborhood

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Located right here on the corner of Church and Tradd is what I think is one of my probably top 10 homes in Charleston. I just love the look of this brick. This is 80 Church Street. So, we're on Church here to the right, Tradd goes there to the left. Thank you to Patricia Byrne for letting me tour this home. Again, we're at 80 Church. This is listed for $4.6 million. Now, it was built in 1900. We got some history a little bit before that though. Um real quick, by these numbers as we go and look at this porch, it is four bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms. It's approximately 3,300 square feet, and we are in South of Broad, just about a block away from Broad Street. We'll turn around here and take a beautiful look at Church Street here and Tradd. I actually toured that home right there across the street on the corner recently. If you're a TikTok viewer, I've got that pinned right now at the time of posting. And if you're on a YouTube, then I'm just going to link that here at the end for you so you can go over there and look. This home it did win a Carolopolis Award. So, that is a um Preservation Society of Charleston's awards for um renovations and everything. It's It's amazing. I got to go this year. All right, let's head inside 80 Church.

[00:01:03]Walking in, we're right here. Stairs on the left. I love these dark floors. This house is just exquisite, guys. Kitchen straight back through those archways.

[00:01:09]You come over here. You got kind of living room, dining room, uh another dining room almost um that comes off of the kitchen, but um tons of natural light. Let's going to get into the history of this property as we're looking around here. You see this fireplace over there right right there in the corner. Um there's one right around there um on the other corner as well, which is kind of cool. All right, so the house and its history. Built in 1900. Let's talk about pre-1900.

[00:01:33]We know from the Sanborn maps that were uh published in 1884 and 1888, there was a house here. However, they were yellow on the maps, which means it was a framed house and they were two stories. So, there's two-story framed house here in 1884 and in 1888, and then this home is of course brick, kind of two stories with the bottom story below, but it's brick. So, it is different. So, we know there was something before, most likely residential, but we don't really have much information on what that was or who lived there.

[00:02:06]And there was the earthquake in 1886.

[00:02:10]So, who knows, maybe the home was damaged during then and then rebuilt in 1900, but that's just something that we we don't know. But, so we'll just start at 1900. Uh we're back here. This is kind of your eat-in kitchen area. You got the kitchen over here, and then there's this little like butler's pantry laundry right there. But, we're going to head outside of this door here, and then we'll head back in um before we get into the history a little more because there is something about this house back around this corner. We have a little courtyard here. There's a door back there that has been boarded up, and we're not really sure what it's for. It has a doorbell on it, and it's a really skinny door. Someone said they thought maybe it was like a service entrance, but having a doorbell on it, then I mean that's more of a recent thing. So, um I'm curious if this had once been a multi-family unit here, and that was a second entrance. And you'll see it goes into where the laundry room butler pantry is. But, let me turn around.

[00:03:05]We're going to see that right here. So, you got this little door. There would have been stairs right here. Look how skinny that door is. I don't know.

[00:03:12]Anyways, we're going to head back around here and back in the house, back in talking about this home. So, 1900s. Now, we're going to also talk about this block here because there is some history about this block.

[00:03:24]And one of the most notable neighbors of this house down at 76 Church Street was DuBose Heyward. He is the writer of Porgy and Bess Porgy. Um as you know, he wrote that actually down on Folly, but he owned this home here, and he was actually a big instrumental person in actually saving these blocks that are around here in the 1920s and 30s. Um I talk a lot more about that in the video of the 79 Church Street across the street uh and how he kind of bought that, briefly saved it, and ended up sparking all of the neighbors to renovate their homes as opposed to having it being sold off for affordable housing. So, he had a big part in what this corner still looks like today, which I think is super cool. And okay, now we're going to head back here real quick. Um so, if we look over on the left, that's where that door comes in.

[00:04:17]You can see kind of where it pops out just like an inch there. That's where that door is. So, it would have come into this little room. We don't know, maybe it was a there was a staircase that went upstairs here, or nobody really knows, but that's Let me know in the comments what you think that could have been. Um we'll we'll just kind of pretend that we know what happened.

[00:04:36]Sorry for getting distracted. Um back to the history. So, for the history of this home, I actually had to pull in newspaper articles from 1909 and 1977 I found that had mentioned this address.

[00:04:47]And from there we did some research on the people and what was mentioned in there. One thing that came up a lot was the the home or flats or rooms listed for rent. Uh one was in 1911 as an attractive flat for $20 a month. So, that was December 4th, 1911.

[00:05:06]What up? But before that in 1909, so there's an Evening Post article that stated that a ca- um an Edwin T. Burdell, his wife, her dad was visiting and he was Captain Harry A.

[00:05:20]Strohbar of Savannah. Now, he was described as one of the oldest, most widely known, and most popular captains on the Savannah River route between Augusta, Georgia and Savannah, and also on the route between Savannah and Beaufort, South Carolina. It's kind of cool. All right, so now we're down on the first floor, so there is this bedroom, full bathroom. There's a little storage closet back there living room.

[00:05:39]So, you got this full living space here.

[00:05:41]Just a little bit below street level, but we are in the high ground from the um original walled city of Charleston.

[00:05:49]So, take that for what it is.

[00:05:52]I know a lot of trouble in the comments about why do you build low in Charleston? It's just going to flood. I don't know. Just whatever. Just say it down in the comments. Everybody does.

[00:06:00]Okay, so anyways, the Burdell family uh is one of Charleston's oldest. And 1861 city census um lists the estate of A. J. E.

[00:06:10]Burdell as owning multiple properties in the Church Street corridor. It didn't say the addresses, but this would probably be one of the the lots that he eventually owned or owned back then.

[00:06:22]And then again, we do have the bunch of rental listings all throughout. And then there was actually a lost property from an unnamed residence in a newspaper um that was in the News and Courier in 1917.

[00:06:34]And whoever had lost something, they lost a meerschaum skull pipe. And so, there was a reward if returned to 80 Church Street in good condition. So, there was active occupancy during the World War I era. We don't know who it was, but we do know that someone was living here.

[00:06:53]Move on to 1935.

[00:06:56]Uh look at that little window up there.

[00:06:57]Um rewind and check that out. I think it's cool. Anyways, in 1935, we have a Mr. and Mrs. Maurice McLaughlin of What up? 80 Church Street, and they were noted as visiting a Mr. Theo McAuliffe in Augusta, Georgia. So, the occupation or anything wasn't said, but this was that Depression era South of Broad residence, and so there was someone living here um during that time. So, we now we forward to 1941 and to about 1943-ish.

[00:07:35]Again, the even there's an Evening Post and a News and Courier article through there that mentioned an Elizabeth L.

[00:07:42]Hertzog. And it mentioned that she was a widow and her son Gerard Hertzog was visiting from Washington, D.C. And in a 1943 article, it said that Mr. Hertzog is an assistant to Attorney General Francis Biddle. Now, Francis Biddle was FDR's Attorney General, and he was later a U.S. judge at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. So, that means an assistant to the sitting U.S. Attorney General at the peak of World War II was directly kind of tied to this house through his parents and his mother.

[00:08:12]So, this is a bedroom here. It's actually being used as kind of the master closet. We turn around, we're going to see these closets built in here. Uh all right, let's go back to the history. So, now we have 1948, and this is the only confirmed commercial use.

[00:08:26]There's a full display advertisement for a Wisteria gift shop at 80 Church with a Mrs. Henry M. Lilienthal as the owner.

[00:08:36]Now, it explicitly targeted tourists in attention. Tourists, see our selection of Mammy dolls and Charleston souvenirs.

[00:08:42]Now, the Lilienthal family was among the most prominent Jewish families in Charleston, and um even records list um Mr. Lilienthal as serving as Charleston on Charleston's civic boards in late 19th century. So, this is again the only confirmed commercial use at 80 Church Street in its whole documented history that we could find.

[00:09:03]And then we have an Esther Marian Seabrook Connor who lived here from the 40s about the mid-70s. And one thing is she hosted Century Club meetings. And that means that this home was a genuine center of Charleston civic and social life during the 50s and 70s. So, kind of a big deal. And we take a look out here.

[00:09:21]We got this little Juliet balcony looking out on the Church Street. Guys, that's kind of all we have on this home.

[00:09:26]Um yeah, it was fun researching this.

[00:09:28]Check out that other house over there at 79 Church. Um have that right here for you guys on YouTube, and have a wonderful day, and I'll see you on the next tour.