Charleston Visitor Center

In front of the entrance stands a wrought-iron grille, unattached to any fence. It has nothing to lock: this is the Welcome Gate, installed here when the former railroad Deans Warehouse was transformed into a city visitor and transportation center. The brick building from the middle of the nineteenth century once housed freight for the South Carolina Railroad. In May nineteen ninety-one, staff arrived here with maps and tour schedules, and a parking area for tourist buses was laid out behind the warehouse. During the conversion, the city preserved a substantial amount of the old materials.

The main entrance was entrusted to Philip Simmons, a Charleston blacksmith who worked to ensure that his craft would not disappear along with horse-drawn carriages. At thirteen, he became an apprentice in the workshop of another Simmons, Peter, who was not a relative. Philip repaired tools, fitted iron tires onto wheels, and made parts for boats and plows: this was how he earned his living. When automobiles began to displace carriages, Simmons turned to decorative grilles and gates. Iron that had once held a wheel to its rim now kept children in the yard and closed passageways between houses. The commissions allowed the blacksmith to remain at the anvil; over time, his work spread throughout Charleston. Simmons himself said that the anvil fed and clothed him.

Simmons approached the commission for the center as a seventy-eight-year-old master, already officially retired for two years. The local artist Mary Edna Fraser helped him with the design. Simmons designed the gate and directed its manufacture; at that time, it was considered his largest work. Even before the center opened, South Carolina legislators passed a separate resolution in his honor and called the grille the “gateway to the city.” They specifically noted his decision to return to work for the sake of this entrance.

The Welcome Gate still stands separately in front of the old warehouse. Behind it now are not freight bills and railcars, but maps, tour tickets, and passages to buses.