Cabbage or Catfish Row
Location Information
89 - 91 Church Street, downtown Charleston
By the 1920's, much of Church and East Bays Streets had degenerated into slums, and these buildings were crowded tenements with the residents selling produce on the street. Sammy Smalls, a crippled black fish vendor who drove a goat-drawn cart and had a propensity for settling arguments with a gun or a knife, was known to frequent "Cabbage Row". Just down the street lived DuBose Heyward, a scion of planter aristocracy (reduced to selling insurance) and an aspiring novelist. The "Catfish Row" of his novel, Porgy, was patterned after this
neighborhood, and his title character was a romanticized version of the foul-smelling fishmonger with the long criminal record. Heyward later collaborated on the opera Porgy and Bess, renting for George Gershwin a house on Folly Beach from which the two ventured by boat to the isolated sea island religious services for inspiration.
Exert taken from; The Charleston Walking Tour by Alan Hartley
89 - 91 Church Street, downtown Charleston
By the 1920's, much of Church and East Bays Streets had degenerated into slums, and these buildings were crowded tenements with the residents selling produce on the street. Sammy Smalls, a crippled black fish vendor who drove a goat-drawn cart and had a propensity for settling arguments with a gun or a knife, was known to frequent "Cabbage Row". Just down the street lived DuBose Heyward, a scion of planter aristocracy (reduced to selling insurance) and an aspiring novelist. The "Catfish Row" of his novel, Porgy, was patterned after this
neighborhood, and his title character was a romanticized version of the foul-smelling fishmonger with the long criminal record. Heyward later collaborated on the opera Porgy and Bess, renting for George Gershwin a house on Folly Beach from which the two ventured by boat to the isolated sea island religious services for inspiration.
Exert taken from; The Charleston Walking Tour by Alan Hartley
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