Oscar Wilde In America

Venue

Academy Of Music

NW corner of King and Market Streets, Charleston, SC (now 225-227 King Street)

Originally: store building erected after the 1838 fire

New store building: 1852 (architect: Edward C. Jones)

Remodeled as Academy Of Music: 1869 (architect John Henry Devereux)

Opened: December 1, 1869 (John Chadwick)

Purchased: 1875, John E. Owens, actor

Seating capacity: 1200

Demolished: 1937

Replaced: 1939, Riviera Theatre, extant

Accommodation

Charleston Hotel

200 Meeting Street, between Pinckney and Hayne Streets (east side), Charleston, SC

Original building: 1837-38

Destroyed (fire): 1838, one month after opening

Rebuilt: 1838-39 in Greek Revival style (N. F. Potter, James A. Potter and James E. Kelsey)

Opened: 1839

Demolished: 1959-60

Replaced: 1860, by a motel

Now: Bank of America

Ephemera

The News and Courier, (Charleston, SC), July 8, 1882, 4*

Oscar Dear, Oscar Dear! The Original of "Bunthorne" Appears in Charleston.

The arrival of the apostle of modern Aestheticism was an event which would have been marked by something of a demonstration, but for the fact that very few people knew at what hour the apostle would reach the city. A few moments after 1 o'clock yesterday an open carriage stopped in front of the ladies' entrance to the Charleston Hotel. From this emerged first a small but good looking American citizen, a little off-color; then a dapper little red whiskered man, and finally two hundred pounds of avoirdupois of aesthetic human flesh and bones done up in a mouse-colored velveteen shooting jacket and salt and pepper small clothes. The head was ornamented with long ambrosial locks of very dark hair, and capped with a broad brim, dim colored slouch hat, something out of the style of Buffalo Bill or Texas Jack. ’That’s him,’ cried Ingliss, the barber, who had come out to see the sight, and there was a rush of the few persons who were loafing about the hotel in the direction of the show, while the store fronts in the immediate vicinity were speedily adorned with idle salesmen and drummers. The door of the ladies' entrance being locked, the 200 pounds of aestheticism posed about on the door steps, grim and dusty, and uncomfortable, but looking all the same like a magnified photograph of Geo. Denham in the role of 'Bunthorne' forcibly to mind ...

* Article also records the venue as Academy of Music.