Working location

Quinby Photograph and Fine Art Gallery

261 King Street · Charleston, South Carolina

Approximate historical location. Placed by block, not by building. Two corners on King Street can be fixed in both the 1861 census and the 1884 Sanborn survey: the Siegling music house at the Beaufain corner (251–253 King in 1861, 247 in 1884) and Eibe H. Marjenhoff’s premises at the Liberty corner (333 King in 1861, still 333 in 1884, and he is listed at 2 Liberty Street as well). Between those two anchors the two numbering schemes differ by no more than about half a dozen doors. The point given here is that many doors along the block from the anchor corner, at a nominal thirty-foot frontage — the frontage the 1882 renumbering contract itself used. It is a position within a block, not a building. Quinby was the fourth door north of the Beaufain corner, in the block between Beaufain and Liberty, on the west side.

The address is printed on a surviving mount: Charleston, S.C. : Quinby & Co., 261 King Street. George N. Barnard worked from the same address in partnership with the firm between 1868 and 1871, after the war.

Ford's 1861 census confirms it independently of the mount: Charles J. Quinby is listed as the occupant of No. 261 King Street, west side, Ward 4, in a house owned by Mrs. Susan Wood. This is the only wartime Charleston studio address in this section that two separate kinds of evidence agree on.

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

What is there now

Not established as a building. The block is established: the west side of King between Beaufain and Liberty, at its southern end.

Where the address comes from

  • Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/
  • Stephen Davis and Jack W. Melton Jr., 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War (Charleston: Historical Publications LLC, 2020).
  • Frederick A. Ford, Census of the City of Charleston, South Carolina, for the Year 1861, Illustrated by Statistical Tables, Prepared under the Authority of the City Council (Charleston, 1861). The street lists give, for every house on every street, the number, the owner and the occupant. https://archive.org/details/censusofcityofch00char

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
  • Frederick A. Ford, Census of the City of Charleston, South Carolina, for the Year 1861, Illustrated by Statistical Tables, Prepared under the Authority of the City Council (Charleston, 1861). The street lists give, for every house on every street, the number, the owner and the occupant. https://archive.org/details/censusofcityofch00char
  • Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/

Sources

  • Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/
  • Stephen Davis and Jack W. Melton Jr., 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War (Charleston: Historical Publications LLC, 2020).
  • Frederick A. Ford, Census of the City of Charleston, South Carolina, for the Year 1861, Illustrated by Statistical Tables, Prepared under the Authority of the City Council (Charleston, 1861). The street lists give, for every house on every street, the number, the owner and the occupant. https://archive.org/details/censusofcityofch00char