The history of White Point Gardens

White Point Garden

Nestled at the southern tip of Charleston's peninsula, where the Ashley and Cooper Rivers converge to form the Atlantic-bound harbor, White Point Garden—often called Battery Park—stands as a verdant testament to the city's layered past. Spanning 5.7 acres, this shaded oasis of live oaks, palmettos, and oyster-shell paths has evolved from a humble shoal into a repository of military relics, pirate lore, and civic pride. Its history, etched in cannon fire and public hangings, reflects Charleston's turbulent journey from colonial outpost to modern tourist haven.

The site's origins trace to the early 18th century, when it was known as Oyster Point, a natural accumulation of bleached shells that lent a ghostly pallor to the marshy promontory—hence its renaming to White Point around 1700. Depicted in Edward Crisp's 1704 survey map of Charles Towne, the area served as a defensive vantage, overlooking Fort Sumter and the harbor's strategic waters. By the 1720s, it darkened with infamy: British colonial authorities hanged notorious pirates here, including Stede Bonnet, the "Gentleman Pirate," and his 29 crew members in 1718 after their capture near Sullivan's Island. Their executions drew crowds to the gallows on the point, bodies left swaying as warnings; folklore whispers of spectral screams echoing from the oaks at night, with Bonnet's ghost said to haunt the northeast corner.

Formal development began in the 19th century amid Charleston's cotton boom. Landfill extended the peninsula, and in 1837, the City of Charleston acquired the land, transforming it into a public pleasure garden. A bathing house erected in 1840 by James English, William Patton, and Henry L. Pinckney offered seaside amenities, complete with a cake parlor, but storms repeatedly battered it until its demolition in 1881 for park expansion. During Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, the garden symbolized racial divides: Black Charlestonians celebrated emancipation on Independence Day but were barred otherwise, underscoring the era's inequities.

The park's military legacy deepened during wartime. In the Revolutionary War, it fortified against British assaults; Colonel William Moultrie's 1776 defense of nearby Fort Sullivan earned him a 2007 statue here, replacing the USS Maine's capstan. The Civil War saw it bristling with earthworks as Union shells rained from 1863–1865, sparing the city but scarring the landscape. Postwar, it became a monument graveyard: ten cannons from Fort Sumter and the ironclad USS Keokuk arrived by 1900, joined by Revolutionary French pieces, Civil War Brooke rifles, a World War I howitzer, and Spanish-American War relics. Key memorials include the 1877 Defenders of Fort Moultrie statue honoring Sergeant William Jasper; the 1879 bust of historian William Gilmore Simms; the 1899 Hunley submarine monument for its crew who sank the USS Housatonic; the 1932 Confederate Defenders obelisk by Hermon MacNeil; a 1943 Bonnet plaque; and World War II tributes to lost submarines like the USS Amberjack and USS Hobson.

A 1907 bandstand, restored in 1985 and 2010, hosted socials, while Willard Hirsch's 1962 dancing girl fountain delighted children. Today, White Point Garden thrives as Charleston's oldest park, drawing picnickers and wedding parties under its moss-draped canopy. Yet its ghosts—pirates, soldiers, and forgotten freedoms—linger, reminding visitors that beneath the beauty lies a history as deep and unforgiving as the harbor tides.