Two juxtaposed buildings in South Carolina’s largest city raise questions of what wealth really means.
Charleston, S.C. — Two buildings in close proximity in South Carolina’s largest city suggest a question: Where does wealth come from? Or, maybe, what is wealth?
The U.S. Custom House is a beautiful building. It was completed in 1879 near the waterfront in what was, at the time, one of America’s largest ports of entry. Charleston is a city full of beautiful buildings, but most of them are relatively small. The grandeur of the white stone construction and the neoclassical style combined with its imposing size makes the Custom House stand out.
It takes wealth to construct such a building. The wealth is very plainly on display, not only in the architecture, but in the landscaping around it and the care with which it is upkept. This building was built to collect money.
Custom houses in other U.S. cities and around the world are frequently beautiful structures. Most of them are historically preserved because technology has made them obsolete. Governments no longer need a building to collect taxes on imports. The Custom House in Charleston is still owned by the federal government and, despite its beauty, seems lifeless. People walk by it, not to it.
From the steps of the Custom House, one can see the rear end of a different building: the Charleston City Market:
The Charleston City Market building in Charleston, S.C. (Dominic Pino)
The land on which it sits was originally donated by Founding Father Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in 1788. Its architecture is not so beautiful. It’s a long brick shed for most of its length, which stretches four blocks of Market Street. Unlike the visual coherence of the Custom House, the market has clearly been renovated in different stages and looks different in each block. The opposite end of the market is also in the neoclassical style, though not as impressive as the Custom House:
The back end of the Charleston City Market in Charleston, S.C. (Dominic Pino)
But the City Market is bustling. It’s a place people want to be. Its website describes it as the “cultural heart of Charleston” due to its being a place of business for over 300 entrepreneurs. It’s open every day of the year except Christmas.
Its homely architecture contains tremendous beauty in the jewelry, household decorations, and clothing being sold. The Custom House is beautiful, but the City Market can make your house beautiful. I bought a magnet shaped like South Carolina with a hand-painted depiction of the city skyline. I also bought breakfast at the City Market. There wasn’t any food for sale at the Custom House. Markets are a lot better than government at providing food for people.
The area surrounding the City Market is full of restaurants and other shops. People walk to it, and through it, not by it.
In the olden days, top customs jobs were sinecures. The people who held those jobs were among the wealthiest people in the city, but their wealth came at the expense of others. It came at the expense of more qualified people who were passed over for political reasons, and it came at the expense of traders who paid the taxes that paid their salaries.
Wealth is actually created in the market. Charleston has a shameful history as a center of the slave trade, but no slaves were ever traded at the City Market. It has always been a home for voluntary exchange of goods and services. The descendants of slaves sell some of the most popular goods at the market today, sweetgrass baskets.
The wealth in the City Market is mostly unseen, unlike the very visible wealth of the Custom House. That’s because it shows up in private places. That’s true both from the perspective of buyers, who gain new things valuable to them that make their lives better, and sellers, who have incomes to support themselves and their families.
Money was collected in the Custom House, but it is exchanged in the City Market. Money in the Custom House is accumulated for the federal government, but money in the City Market doesn’t stay there long. It gets deposited in private banks and lent out to other people who are buying a home or building a business. The productive activity there is quickly connected with productive activity elsewhere, creating wealth in other places too.
If you measure wealth by how much money the government has, then the Custom House is where wealth is created. If you measure wealth like Adam Smith, who wrote in the Wealth of Nations, “Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life,” then the City Market is where wealth is created. In Charleston, it’s clear which of the two places people would rather be.
