Old Slave Mart Museum

Address 6 Chalmers St

The only surviving slave auction building in South Carolina, and one of the most important sites in Charleston for understanding the history of the slave trade. Located on Chalmers Street in the French Quarter, Ryan's Mart at 6 Chalmers was the largest slave-dealing complex in the city, handling thousands of auctions per year in the antebellum period.

The museum opened in 2007 after years of campaigning by descendants of enslaved people and historians. It is deliberately small and unflinching: the exhibits focus on the experiences of enslaved individuals — their stories, their family separations, their survival strategies — rather than abstracting the trade into statistics. The building itself, with its original masonry and arched ceiling, is part of the exhibit. One of Charleston's essential stops, and more affecting than most historic sites in the city.

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A story
By 1856, when outdoor slave auctions were banned from the streets of Charleston, the city's slave traders moved inside — to covered auction rooms like Ryan's Mart on Chalmers Street. The building was later used as a tenement, a jail, a museum of Civil War memorabilia, and a garage, before opening in 2007 as an honest museum about what actually happened here. It is the only surviving structure in South Carolina where enslaved people were auctioned.

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