Southern regionalism and historic preservation in Charleston, South Carolina, 1920–1940

Abstract

Historic preservation and regionalism are two self-conscious twentieth-century approaches to shaping places. Both flowered in the period 1920 to 1940. They have common roots in concerns about modern culture's changes to an inherited American landscape. The first historic district zoning in the United States was established in Charleston, South Carolina in 1931. The immediate reason for its creation was the invasion of antebellum residential neighborhoods by “modernistic” gasoline stations. The regionalism of the time provided a supportive context for Charleston's reaction against these manifestations of modernity. Regionalists championed older ways of life and landscapes that distinguished various sections of the United States. In the South, several strains of regionalist thought developed during the 1920s and 1930s, from the liberalism of the Chapel Hill social scientists to the reactionary conservatism of the Agrarians. Landscape preservationists in Charleston shared ideas with both of these groups of regionalists, and with others, and had some direct contact with them. Preservation in Charleston was a way of coping with perceived negative aspects of modern urban industrial society.