This article is part of our Design special section on retrofits.
In mid-March, as the South Carolina sun faded in the evening, tourists gathered in the shadows outside Charleston’s Old Jail. Two teenage boys ribbed each other — “Hey, did you see that? Wait, did you hear that?” They were there for a ghost tour that included the 1802 Romanesque Revival building towering over them.
This National Historic Landmark, with an 1822 addition by Robert Mills, the architect of the Washington Monument, is reputed to be stalked by the spirit of Lavinia Fisher, said to be the nation’s first female serial killer, who was hanged for her crimes in 1820. Denmark Vesey, a Black carpenter and community leader who was convicted of plotting a slave revolt and executed in 1822, was another inmate whose memory kicks up dust. During the Civil War, the place held what now could be the restless shades of Union Army prisoners. While these spirits may not have been laid to rest, the building’s original use has: The Old Jail closed in 1939.
The tour guides who pass in horse-drawn carriages dutifully repeat these stories, only now they have a new punchline. “Here we are on Magazine Street — fitting, as this old jail is now the offices of Garden & Gun magazine,” announced one operator.
The national bimonthly, which is devoted to Southern culture, moved its headquarters to the Old Jail in March after a decade at the Cigar Factory, another historic Charleston building. There, it had occupied 30,000 square feet with exposed brick walls, executive offices trimmed in wood reclaimed from barns at the Churchill Downs racetrack and shutters painted the city’s signature dark, dark green.
The pandemic, however, shifted needs. With many of its 52 staff members working remotely, at least part of the time, the magazine required less space. Plus it had matured, said Rebecca Wesson Darwin, Garden & Gun’s co-founder and chief executive. With its lease ending and its 20th anniversary approaching (the periodical began publishing in 2007), Darwin envisioned offices that were fresh and slightly more refined, “yet still rooted in the South.”
She added, “I can’t imagine putting these talented people I care so much about in a white-box cubicle. Especially not in Charleston, a cultural capital of the South, which, like the magazine, is evolving.” Garden & Gun magazine reports a print audience of 1.6 million, and the brand now includes a shop in Charleston and dining clubs in Atlanta and Louisville.
After falling into decrepitude, the Old Jail served, from 2005 to 2016, as a campus and lab for the American College of the Building Arts. Students learning traditional building trades had completed some stabilization, masonry and plaster and iron work and built the timber-framed courtyard shed. After they vacated, Landmark Enterprises, a commercial real estate developer, bought the property in 2016 for $2 million and dug into its rehabilitation in earnest. When, walking past the Old Jail in spring 2024, Darwin saw a “For Lease” sign, Landmark had recently completed a seven-year, $15 million, award-winning preservation project.
Darwin made an appointment to tour the building, with its octagonal rear wing, original jailhouse doors, iron work and raw plaster finishes. “Landmark had done the heavy lifting,” she recalled. “We just put icing on the cake.”
To execute what were, figuratively speaking, the rosettes, she hired Martha Mulholland, an interior designer trained in historic preservation. Based in Los Angeles, Mulholland had Kentucky roots and brought to the project her memories of summers spent on Pawleys Island, a South Carolina seaside town. She recalled having to balance functional needs “in this large, octagonal space, not exactly fit for an office,” where there were few outlets and no right angles, with the demands for historic integrity. The goal, she said, was to “subvert” the way people think about a haunted former jail and to “transform it into something super cool.”
Mulholland described the historic building’s quirks as both “vexing and really beautiful — the way the plaster glows and how the hard surfaces and cold materials, like the old iron and basalt stone stairs, could be warmed up with art, lighting and beautiful fabrics. It was lovely to witness.”
Her first job was to define spaces. There would be a library, a kitchen used as a break room and two open work rooms — one for collaborative sessions, the other a “quiet” room with private conference nooks. There would also be a lounge with a bourbon bar “because it’s Garden & Gun,” she said. (The magazine was named for a beloved old Charleston bar.)
Rich autumnal hues — ruby red, moss green, smoky blue — tint the furnishings in these rooms, based on a palette inspired by the kitchen’s Zak + Fox wallcovering. In the lounge, a painted panel that Mulholland found in an antique shop and hung over a mantel “holds all the colors I used,” she said.
To help offset costs (“This is a print magazine, God bless them, not a tech company with a big budget,” Mulholland said), Garden & Gun negotiated promotional partnerships with design brands, including Urban Electric Company and Workstead for lighting, Elizabeth Eakins for rugs and Lee Industries and Crypton for textiles. She also recovered vintage chairs collected by Darwin and commissioned a handcrafted conference table and two workstation tables from Nicholas Williams, the husband of the magazine’s integrated marketing director, Christine Williams.
David DiBenedetto, Garden & Gun’s senior vice president and editor in chief, said he was initially skeptical about relocating to the foreboding building and imagined staff cracking jokes about being locked up. But other options “were ho-hum,” he said. “Rebecca doesn’t do ho-hum.” Mulholland’s design assuaged his doubt: “To me it feels like your favorite coffee shop meets a library meets the coolest loft you’ve ever been in.”
He said he enjoys watching his colleagues pick spots based on their moods. Before, the various departments were siloed, but now “the edit folks can have easy conversations with the events and marketing teams,” he said. “There’s a shared energy.”
DiBenedetto and his staff of storytellers often imagine what may have transpired within the thick, scarred walls. “It’s important to us that the building’s history remains visible, the patina palpable,” he said. “It’s like the magazine: We celebrate the people, the heritage, the culture, craft and spirit of the modern South, but we don’t gloss over our past.”
