Details For Cover ID# 28711

"Charleston S.C. Paid Dec. -- " blue circular datestamp ties 1851 3c dull red Type II (11A) on cover to Randolph, Mass., with blue cameo corner card of "Mills House, Thomas S. Nickerson, Proprietor, Charleston, S.C."  Contemporary docketing on back "Dec. 1854".

The Mills House was built in 1853 at the southwest corner of Meeting and Queen streets. It was named for its owner, wholesale grain merchant Otis Mills (1794-1869). The five-story building had an iron balcony across the fascade, ornate terra-cotta cornices above the windows, and an arcaded entryway. Thomas S. Nickerson, an experienced hotelier, leased the completed Mills House from Otis Mills from 1853 to mid-1857. This confirms the Dec. 1854 docketing date on the back.

The hotel boasted a dining saloon, a gentlemen's dining room, a second-floor ladies "ordinary" with tables for 160, and 180 guest rooms. Gas lighting illuminated every room, and on each floor were eight "bathing rooms" for ladies; similar rooms for gentlemen were found on the first floor. Water for the baths, steam heating system, and in-house laundry would be supplied by wells and cisterns on the property. Dozens of people, white and black, free and slave, found employment at the Mills House. William Inglis, a free man of color who worked as a barber in the hotel, earned enough that by 1856 he and his wife Elizabeth were able to buy the house at today's 46 Anson Street (Otis Mills acted as their trustee for the purchase). Source: Preservation Society of Charleston.