Phillps Community Historic District
National Register Listing
Street Address:
S.C. Highway 41, approx. between Virginia Rouse and Joe Rouse Rds., roughly bounded by Horlbeck Cr., Dunes West, and Park West, Mount Pleasant vicinity (Charleston County)
Alternate Name:
Phillips Tract, Laurel Hill Plantation
NRHP Nomination
Record Number:
S10817710208
Description and Narrative:
The Phillips Community Historic District is locally significant as a Traditional Cultural Place (TCP) first settled in 1875 by formerly enslaved African Americans. The Phillips district encompasses a total of 415 acres, which includes a roughly 401-acre core residential area situated on the northeast side of Horlbeck Creek near Mount Pleasant, plus three discontiguous but associated properties on Parkers Island and along U.S. Highway 17. It is significant in the areas of Community Planning and Development, Ethnic Heritage: Black, and Social History: Traditional Cultural History. The district is a remarkable example of an intact postbellum rural freedmen's community in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, retaining settlement patterns, historic landscape features, and original plat lines that have defined the community for over a century. Of all the nineteenth-century freedmen settlements established in Mount Pleasant after the Civil War, Phillips Community survives as the most intact, representing the self-sufficiency and self-reliance of Black rural communities in the wake of the Civil War and their efforts to maintain autonomy and freedom through agricultural practices. Today, approximately 85% of the residents within the Phillips Community descend from the original Black farmers who occupied and purchased the lots during the Reconstruction era, and who maintain core aspects of regional Gullah culture through agriculture, commerce, and social and religious customs, the continuance of which make Phillips significant as a TCP. The official period of significance begins with the community's initial 1875 subdivision and continues and ends in the present, to reflect the ongoing multi-generational preservation of the Gullah heritage and cultural value placed on continued land ownership by the current residents of the Phillips Community. In accordance with the National Register's "fifty-year-rule," contributing resources include those that date to at least 1972, or fifty years from the date of submission to NPS. Listed in the National Register September 7, 2023.
Period of Significance:
1875 – 2023
Level of Significance:
Local
Area of Significance:
Community Planning and Development;Ethnic Heritage: Black;Social History
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
September 7 2023
