St. Mark's Episcopal Church
National Register Listing
Street Address:
16 Thomas Street, Charleston, SC (Charleston County)
Alternate Name:
St. Mark's Church, St. Mark's Protestant Episcopal Church
NRHP Nomination Form
Record Number:
S10817710212
Description and Narrative:
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church is a historically Black church located in the Radcliffeborough neighborhood of downtown Charleston. The congregation built the church between 1876 and 1878. St. Mark’s is a wood frame single story building with a Roman Revival temple front. Four Corinthian columns constructed of brick and stucco and featuring cast-iron capitals support the pedimented portico. The sanctuary features fifteen-over-fifteen-over-fifteen pane triple hung windows and stained-glass panels set in round arched window openings. The interior of the church features Victorian ornamentation including dark stained pine paneling, a tin ceiling with a plaster cove, a barrel-vaulted chancel, and a pulpit with a bell-shaped canopy. Closely associated with Charleston’s elite free Black community, St. Mark’s formed in 1865 as the first Protestant Episcopal congregation in the state established by Black congregants independently, rather than as a mission church. St. Mark’s is significant as the first Black congregation to apply for admission to the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina in 1875, setting off a decades-long debate about the status of African Americans in the Episcopal Church in South Carolina that persisted into the twentieth-century civil rights movement. St. Mark’s was one of the first Black churches invited to attend the Episcopal Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina in 1954 and became a voting member in 1965, when the Diocese of South Carolina became the last Episcopal convention in the nation to integrate. The building is also significant as an uncommon example of post-Civil War use of the Roman Revival style in Charleston, and as one of the last temple-form churches to be constructed in the city. Members sought to help legitimize St. Mark’s by tying themselves to Charleston’s architectural past through the use of the Classical Revival architecture that predominated before the Civil War. The Victorian interior of the church is juxtaposed with the Classical exterior. Listed in the National Register January 23, 2026.
Period of Significance:
1876 – 1889;1965
Level of Significance:
State;Local
Area of Significance:
Ethnic Heritage: Black;Religion;Architecture
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
2026-01-23
Date of Boundary Increase:
No Boundary Increase
Location:
Charleston City;Charleston County
