The current St Luke’s Chapel on the campus of the Medical University of South Carolina has a fascinating history.
Prior to the Civil War, the property at the corner of Ashley Ave and Bee Street was a Federal arsenal. Union soldiers from Ft Sumter were ordered to remove the guns and ammunition from the arsenal so it would not fall into Confederate hands if war was declared. That Union detachment was driven back by a rag-tag mob of Charleston militia on November 7th, 1860 and that arsenal became the first Union property to be seized by secessionists in an armed confrontation, months prior to the “the first shots of the Civil War” being fired at Ft Sumter in April 1861.
After the war, A. Toomer Porter acquired the property with the patronage of the oddest pair of former pre-war parishioners. With the financial backing of George Alfred Trenholm and the endorsement of General William Tecumseh Sherman, the U.S. Government transferred the old arsenal to the Holy Communion Church Institute under Reverend Porter’s direction.
The only stipulation was that the property is used only as a school for educational purposes for war widows and orphans. Porter hired a freed black brick mason, Holton Bell, to design and construct the two-story gothic-styled church and surrounding brick wall on the site of the former arsenal.
Despite the time, Hurricane Hugo, and Ashley Avenue flooding, Holton Bell’s church and the brick wall still stand and are now renamed the St Luke’s chapel at MUSC.
To learn more about this story and other Charleston history as well as a good adventure, read Roger Newman’s new Civil War novel, “Will O’ the Wisp: Madness, War, and Recompense.”
