Navy hospital district on the old Charleston base lands on national endangered list

The National Trust for Historic Preservation on Wednesday named the Charleston Naval Hospital District in North Charleston to its 2016 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

The district’s 32 buildings on the former Charleston Naval Base sit mostly vacant, with only a few outlying buildings in use, the Trust said. The district was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in October 2010, according to the S.C. Department of Archives and History.

The threat is a rail line. Palmetto Railways, the state railroad agency, has proposed a line running the length of the district, according to the Trust. The line is part of the agency’s planned Navy Base Intermodal Facility, The Post and Courier reported. The Trust said the line would require demolishing nine of the district’s 32 buildings and would seriously hinder the reuse of 19 others. The Post and Courier put the number of historic buildings to be demolished at five.

The losses could get the district removed from the National Register, the Trust said.

“The Charleston Naval Hospital District is an incredibly important historic resource that has been underappreciated for far too long,” said Stephanie Meeks, the Trust’s president. “We believe there is a solution and, indeed, a great opportunity to incorporate the site as a vibrant and integral part of the larger North Charleston community.”

The district dates to 1902 and was mostly built by the Works Progress Administration in 1938, according to the Trust. During World War II, it was a primary re-entry point for American servicemen wounded in Europe and Africa, treating as many as 4,000 a month at times.

Palmetto Railways paid $10 million in 2013 for property that included the former hospital, The Post and Courier reported. No developer has been able to make the numbers work on the hospital, and one estimate put its renovation at $25 million, the newspaper reported.

The agency is negotiating with preservationists over mitigation. One draft plan calls for a new trust to govern future preservation work on the base’s northern end, funded with at least $1 million from Palmetto Railways, the newspaper reported. An Army Corps of Engineers permit for the rail facility is still pending.

“We want to make sure this rail project doesn’t prevent any of that from happening,” Winslow Hastie, preservation officer with the Historic Charleston Foundation, told The Post and Courier, referring to efforts to revitalize the area.