BETHEL METHODIST CHURCH, Calhoun and Pitt Streets: Elsewhere is reference made to the visits of John and Charles Wesley to Charleston in 1736 and 1737. John Wesley preached in St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in 1737. It was in 1785 that Bishop Asbury and his associates came to Charleston. Bethel, one of the strongholds of Methodism in South Carolina, dates to 1850. The church building was dedicated in 1853. It stands on the site where Wesley once preached and the pulpit from which he preached is still in use. The Sunday school building was erected in 1912. The earlier Bethel, known as Old Bethel, moved from the site, is used by a negro congregation at 222 Calhoun Street.
ST. LUKE’S CHURCH, 20 Elizabeth Street: For the convenience of Episcopalians in the northeastern section of Charleston, St. Luke’s Church was founded in December, 1857. The corner stone of the present building was laid in 1859 and the church, though partly completed, used in February, 1862. During the War for Southern Independence Union soldiers sacked the building and a negro female school was held in it. In the fall of 1865 it was repossessed by the vestry. In 1880 the congregation of St. Stephen’s chapel, Anson Street, united with St. Luke’s. For a time after 1900 the church was closed, but reopened by a section of the congregation of St. Paul’s.
YEAMANS HALL, Club on Goose Creek: On property taking its name from Sir John Yeamans, second Governor at Charles Town, is the Yeamans Hall Club, an exclusive organization, the members of which are mainly from the East. A number of the members have their own cottages on the property. Most of them are interested in hunting preserves in coastal South Carolina. The club property is not open to the public. It is on Goose Creek, some distance above its mouth. The late Walter Camp, in a letter said: “The combination of golf and other sports, with fishing, hunting and the close proximity of a large town for supplies renders the situation particularly attractive.” Golfers of wide experience have pronounced the links at Yeamans Hall among the very best. It is appropriate as Charleston boasted a golf club late in the eighteenth century, on the Harleston Green.
UNITED STATES NAVY YARD, on the Cooper River: The development of this naval base and station grew out of a recommendation by a special board in 1901. Of particular interest to the visitor is the old frigate Hartford, flagship of Commodore Farragut in the Battle of Mobile Bay—“Damn the torpedoes; go ahead.” For some years the cruiser Olympia, flagship of Commodore Dewey in the Battle of Manila Bay, was a receiving ship at the Charleston yard, but it was recommissioned in the World War. The destroyer Tillman, the gunboat Asheville and other naval craft have been built at this yard, which is equipped with a dry dock large enough to accommodate modern battleships, and with marine railways of considerable capacity. One of the navy’s most powerful radio-telegraph stations is at the yard. Charleston’s is the only navy yard on the Atlantic Coast south of Norfolk, of peculiar strategic value in relation to the Panama Canal. During the World War thousands of bluejackets were trained here, and the navy maintained a clothing factory with two thousand operatives.
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, Broad and Church Streets: Having begun in 1773 the Charleston Chamber of Commerce is the oldest in the United States. With the removal of the Charleston Library to its building in King Street, the Chamber of Commerce acquired the building, formerly the home of the old South Carolina Bank.
THE COUNTRY CLUB, on James Island: On picturesque property on James Island, on one side washed by Wappoo Creek, the Charleston Country Club has a handsome and comfortable house and an excellent golf course. The club had its beginning in the Belvedere property on the Cooper River, northward of Magnolia Cemetery. Charleston, according to advertisements in the Charleston City Gazette in the late 1790’s, had the country’s first golf club. The Country Club is accessible by yacht as well as by motor, as it is on the inland waterway. A mile from this club are the municipal links, near the Stono River bridge, open to the public.
CHARLESTON’S BANKS: Oldest banking house in the South, dating to 1834, the main office of the South Carolina National Bank is at the northeast corner of Broad and State Streets. The old Bank of Charleston was the parent of the banking system with offices in Columbia, Greenville, Sumter and other South Carolina towns.
The Carolina Savings Bank’s main offices are at the southwest corner of Broad and East Bay Streets.
The Citizens and Southern Bank of South Carolina is in a new home at the northeast corner of Broad and Church Streets, site of the first Masonic lodge in this country.
The Miners and Merchants’ Bank is at 23 Broad Street.