A CA woman with Hilton Head ties has plans for Bluffton historic building, ‘The Rate’

There was a time when there weren’t any dedicated grocery stores in Bluffton and, when the occasion called for “major grocery shopping” — in Joan Heyward’s words — townsfolk trekked to Savannah.

“And that was a day trip,” Joan, a Bluffton resident, said, explaining that the era’s slow-moving cars plodded along the route that took them through Port Wentworth and, finally, to The Bargain Corner in the city.

It was the mid-1940s, and Bluffton was about to get a grocery store.

That was the intended purpose, anyway, for the building constructed at 45 Bridge St., according to Joan. But the squat structure would soon become something else, and then it would transform again. More recently, it has sat vacant and dilapidated.

It’s known as “The Rate.”

The name is inherently cool: it survives in block letters and fading paint on the building’s cinder-block side, which also sports renderings of a cherry-topped sundae and an ice cream cone along with the promise of Sealtest — exclusively Sealtest — scoops. You could find cosmetics, candies and tobaccos at The Rate, so says its facade.

Now, part of the building is being propped up by added wooden supports. Its windows are boarded up. New owner Debbie Wunder had to remove its roof, she said, because the weight threatened to topple its walls.

But Debbie has plans for The Rate. She hopes to restore it to its original condition, she said.

It’s a mission Joan appreciates, one that offers a window into the Bluffton of old — a cultural anchor in the Lowcountry’s currents of change.

A Savannah man, not the building’s creators, named the place, according to Joan.

Gaillard Heyward — the father of Joan’s late husband, Thomas — began construction in the winter of 1946 and, with assistance from George Grant, finished the project the following spring.

While it was envisioned as a grocery store, Joan said, it quickly became an ice cream shop. Savannah’s “Shorty Dugger” began renting the place in the summers, she said, and named it The Rate. (“Cut-rate” drug stores were popular at the time, she said, speculating the term might have inspired Shorty, though she can’t be sure.) He also commissioned the Sealtest logo and art on the cinder block, Joan said.

“If you could look in there now, there’s a sink in the floor,” she said. “That was below the freezer that held the ice cream.”

“All these little structures that remain (in Bluffton) tell a story,” Joan said. “From what I’ve heard over the years, (The Rate’s) is children coming in and buying ice cream and bubble gum and playing.”

But the story evolved.

Shorty moved out and, on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 1955, according to Heyward family history, the post office moved in. Thomas’ mother, Lucille, was the post mistress, Joan said.

“The post office was a hang-out place,” she said. “That’s where everybody met.”

The post office was there until 1964, she said.

The Rate was one of some 50 contributing structures — within the Bluffton Historic District — listed on a 1996 registration form for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Register of Historic Places.

“It has a front gable roof with exposed rafters and large display windows,” the form says. “The front facade has a stepped parapet wall .... The building is located at the corner of a residential lot, resembling the pattern established by the earlier commercial structures on Calhoun Street.”

Current owner Debbie Wunder, who bought the property last year, according to Beaufort County deed records, said she wants to restore The Rate in a way that honors the town’s history, architecture and preservation efforts. She wants to “gently repaint” the Sealtest logo and ice-cream artwork on the building’s side.

“We are dying to find photos of what it looked like, inside and out, pre-1980s,” Debbie said.

She went to high school for a time on Hilton Head Island, and her mother still lives in Sun City, she said. And while Debbie resides in Los Angeles, she and her spouse, Rusty Pistachio, hope to retire to Bluffton. The Rate, Debbie said, might one day house a studio for Rusty, a metalsmith and jeweler.

And the building’s backstory inspired her to research the history of old country stores in South Carolina.

In “Rural Commerce in Context: South Carolina’s Country Stores, 1850-1950,” Debbie found pictures of similar cinder-block buildings with stepped parapet front facades, gabled roofs and hand-painted advertisements and murals. And she learned how important these stores were to their communities.

“It was kind of meant to be a community center where people would buy products but also hang out and talk about what was going on in the community,” Debbie said.

“It was a meeting place.”

Currently, the Town of Bluffton’s Development Review Committee is reviewing Debbie’s application to renovate The Rate.

A preliminary development plan is scheduled to be presented Feb. 27, according to town records.

Later, a final plan must be submitted.

Will Howard, of the Bluffton’s planning department, said the review process was likely to continue through March.

This story was originally published January 23, 2019 at 11:17 AM.