Historic Hotels & Inns in South Carolina

Ways in

Themes in South Carolina

Charleston: single houses, courtyards and the walled city

Founded in 1670, Charleston moved to the tip of its peninsula by 1680 and became the only walled city in British North America. All 13 inns we list there sit inside the Charleston Historic District, first designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and enlarged through 1986. Many are Charleston single houses or old commercial blocks: the Elliott House Inn, built from salvaged brick after the 1861 fire, and on King Street the Kings Courtyard Inn, an 1853 building whose light wells were opened into courtyards in 1983. The John Rutledge House Inn dates to 1763 and Wentworth Mansion to 1886, and the 13-story Francis Marion, Charleston’s tallest structure when it opened in 1924, anchors Marion Square.

Beaufort and its Bay Street waterfront

Beaufort’s historic district, on the National Register since 1969 and a National Historic Landmark since 1973, has four inns. On the Bay Street waterfront, planter Ralph Elliott built the house now called Anchorage 1770, which the state archives describe as pre-Revolutionary, and the Federal-style Cuthbert House dates to about 1811. Union forces occupied the town in the Civil War: Gen. Rufus Saxton made the Cuthbert House his headquarters, bought it at a tax auction in 1863 and hosted Sherman there in 1865, while the Anchorage and the c. 1820 Rhett House on Craven Street were used as hospitals. The Beaufort Inn, the 1897 Wallace Smith Mansion, has taken overnight guests since 1920.

The Upstate: Greenville, Pendleton and Abbeville

Greenville’s 12-story Poinsett Hotel, one of the city’s first skyscrapers, opened in 1925 on the site of the 1824 Mansion House. William Lee Stoddart, architect of Charleston’s Francis Marion, designed it, and the Francis Marion’s owners bought it in 1997 and reopened it as The Westin Poinsett in 2000. In Abbeville, the 1903 Eureka Hotel on Court Square, now The Belmont Inn, was a railroad hotel that lodged vaudeville performers traveling between New York and Miami. In Pendleton, where the whole historic town center is on the National Register, Liberty Hall is an 1849 house turned bed and breakfast, about 5 miles from Clemson.

Aiken’s Winter Colony

Willcox’s was the center of Aiken’s Winter Colony, and the district’s National Register nomination names it as the inn the Winter Colonists frequented, known for its cuisine. Frederick Sugden Willcox opened it in a Victorian cottage in 1898, linked a new three-story building to it around 1900, and the last addition came in 1928; his family ran it until 1957. Today it is The Willcox, individually listed on the National Register since 1982, and it takes pets for a fee. Aiken’s other old hotel, the Commercial Hotel of 1898, has stood vacant since 2017 and is being redeveloped.

Road trip

Pawleys Island to Beaufort, along the coast

Pawleys Island

In summer, start at The Pelican Inn, a beach house built by 1858 behind the island’s highest dunes. It takes guests only from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend.

Mount Pleasant

Across the harbor from Charleston, Post House has seven rooms above a tavern in an 1896 house and store in the Old Village.

Charleston

Give Charleston at least two nights. Pick an inn South of Broad, in the French Quarter, in Ansonborough or on King Street from our Charleston guide.

Beaufort

End on Beaufort’s Bay Street at the Cuthbert House Inn or Anchorage 1770, or a block from the river at the Rhett House Inn.

Context

History and architecture

South Carolina’s historic inns follow its towns’ fortunes. Settlers founded Charles Towne in 1670 and moved it to the tip of the peninsula by 1680; John Rutledge built his Broad Street house there in 1763, and in Beaufort planter Ralph Elliott built the house now called the Anchorage. South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the Constitution on May 23, 1788. In the Civil War, Union forces occupied Beaufort and used its houses as headquarters and hospitals, and in Charleston the 1861 fire burned nearly a third of the city. Then came new hotels: Willcox’s in Aiken’s Winter Colony (1898), the Eureka Hotel, a railroad hotel in Abbeville (1903), and hotel rooms above Henry S. Rose’s store in Florence (1905). In the 1920s William Lee Stoddart designed two tall hotels, the Francis Marion in Charleston (1924) and the Poinsett in Greenville (1925). Preservation followed: the Charleston Historic District became a National Historic Landmark in 1960, and the Mills House was rebuilt to its 1853 layout between 1967 and 1970.