islandpacket.com - The Island Packet Online

• Archive Search

Search Everything in the Lowcountry and the Coastal Empire.

Can Daufuskie's "oyster homes" be saved?

Comment on this | | | | | | | |

The old tin-roofed houses hearken back to a time on Daufuskie Island when the oyster business was thriving, a native island population flourished and tourists were almost unheard of.

But industrialization came to nearby Savannah, polluting the Savannah River and contaminating Daufuskie's once-famous oyster beds. The island's black population left in droves to find work in Savannah, Bluffton and on Hilton Head Island. Many of the distinctive homes that date back to the early 1900s stood empty.

Today the roofs on what locals call "oyster homes" are rusted, their foundations deteriorating. Local leaders, however, hope to restore the homes and other historic buildings to ensure the island's history isn't drowned in a sea of new residential developments.

At a workshop Tuesday, local leaders, developers, Beaufort County planners, preservationists, housing experts and academics struggled to define how to preserve Daufuskie's culture. The meeting was part of ongoing discussions among residents and county planners to create a long-term plan and a new zoning ordinance for the island's community preservation district.

"Over the years I've heard, 'We need to preserve the Gullah culture,' but I haven't seen much movement to that end," said Charles Cauthen, a local developer who first came to Daufuskie in 1979.

"I think the majority of the people are sensitive to what needs to be preserved," said Cauthen. "(It's) the culture of the island, and that means the culture of the people who were here a long time before we got here."

The most tangible idea to come out of the day-long meeting was to restore the oyster houses and use them to tackle another thorny issue for the island -- affordable housing.

"We have people who want to live here, but it's cost prohibitive," said Catherine Tillman, who publishes an island newsletter and helped lead the workshop.

The expense of moving materials and workers by boat to bridge-less Daufuskie inflates the cost of just about everything, including construction. Tillman said homes are out of the price range of many Daufuskie workers who, if they could afford to, would raise families on the island and avoid the ferry commute.

Wick Scurry, who runs a local ferry company, said the challenge would be finding a unified vision among so many competing interests on the island.

"It seems to me that the biggest problem we all have is there are so many different factions," he said.

County planner Brian Herrmann, who's crafting the new ordinance, said zoning on the island badly needs overhauling, not just to encourage preservation, but also to make sure other distinctive buildings meet the county's code.

"The quirky, eccentric buildings that give Daufuskie character" are in many cases not up to current zoning standards, Herrmann said. "But the code should never work against things that are character-defining."

| | | | | | |