Charleston County · Marker 10-127
Slave Trading Complex
Approx. 150 ft. W of Queen St. and State St. intersection, Charleston
Front inscription
From 1856 to 1863, this was the north end of a slave trading complex known as The Mart or Ryan’s Mart. It was opened by Thomas Ryan and extended south to a lot on Chalmers St. that became its main sales room. Prior to auction, enslaved people were held, prepped, and inspected in a large “slave pen” formed by high brick walls connecting the north and south ends of the Mart. The Mart also included a two-story kitchen house and a small structure later recalled as a “dead-house.”
Reverse inscription
Enslaved people were also confined and sometimes sold at Ryan’s Jail, a brick four-story double-house here on Queen St. After slavery was abolished, local Black residents lived in the Mart buildings. African American families still resided in the Queen St. building as late as 1950 when the county health department condemned it as uninhabitable. It was torn down by 1951. The Chalmers St. sales room, now the Old Slave Mart Museum, is the last extant Mart building.