Waterfront Park, located along Concord Street, was historically a long parcel of land that was the center of local maritime traffic travelling in and out of Charleston Harbor. Several wharfs and shipping terminals could be found along the water’s edge, and were a seemingly permanent fixture in the city. After the Civil War, however, and a subsequent long period of a declining shipping industry as new port hubs opened up along the East Coast, the area’s activity dwindled until the small region was all but obsolete. This period of decline was cumulated in the summer of 1955 with a great fire at an on-site steamship terminal. By the 1980s, the area was an overgrown and weed-ridden patch of downtown land that was marred with gravel parking lots and charred pilings of the buildings that once stood long ago.
Menu