Working location
George S. Cook’s gallery
235 King Street · Charleston, South Carolina
Approximate historical location. Not the building. The point is the middle of the King Street commercial corridor between Market and Calhoun streets, from OpenStreetMap.
Craig’s Daguerreian Registry records Cook at 235 King Street in 1852. That he was on King Street through the war is well attested — the Dictionary of Virginia Biography speaks of the supply trade run out of his King Street studio — but this section has not traced a wartime document giving the number, and does not assume the number stayed the same.
The wartime number is now known and it is not this one: Ford's 1861 census puts George S. Cook at No. 265 King Street. Whether he moved between 1852 and 1861 or the street was renumbered under him cannot be told from these two entries alone.
The postwar Cook studio addresses of 281 and later 265 King Street belong to his son George LaGrange Cook and are a different matter again.
The numbering problem
Charleston's present street numbers date from the city-wide renumbering carried out under contract from 1882 and finished before the earthquake of 31 August 1886. A wartime number and a modern number of the same name are not the same address, and no conversion table survives, so this location is not matched to a modern parcel.
Who worked here
- George Smith Cook23 February 1819 – 27 November 1902
- George LaGrange Cook1849 – 1919
What is there now
Not established.
Where the address comes from
- John S. Craig, Craig’s Daguerreian Registry (Torrington, Conn.: John S. Craig), consulted through Pioneer American Photographers.
- Pioneer American Photographers, 1839–1860 — a compilation of period advertisements, directory entries and registry records, with each entry citing the periodical or directory it came from. https://pioneeramericanphotographers.com/
Where the coordinate comes from
- OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. Used for the modern street intersections this section pins approximate locations to. https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
- “The Street Numbers of Peninsular Charleston,” Charleston County Public Library. https://www.ccpl.org/street-numbers-peninsular-charleston
Sources
- John S. Craig, Craig’s Daguerreian Registry (Torrington, Conn.: John S. Craig), consulted through Pioneer American Photographers.
- Pioneer American Photographers, 1839–1860 — a compilation of period advertisements, directory entries and registry records, with each entry citing the periodical or directory it came from. https://pioneeramericanphotographers.com/
- “George Smith Cook (23 February 1819–27 November 1902),” Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia, Richmond. https://old.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Cook_George_Smith
- Stephen Davis and Jack W. Melton Jr., 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War (Charleston: Historical Publications LLC, 2020).