From Preservation Online, the online magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation

www.preservationonline.org

Twice a day and three times on Saturday, eager groups of visitors find their way to 30 Blake Street in Charleston, S.C. A simple metal shed stands there, behind two modest houses. The shed resembles an old garage, with tables, chairs, and pieces of iron scattered outside. But from this humble structure has come some of the most beautiful ironwork in Charleston.

The shed is the workshop of Philip Simmons, an African American blacksmith who has been living in Charleston since 1919 and working there since the mid-1920s. This month, as Simmons celebrates his 95th birthday, the National Trust named his workshop and home, which must be stabilized to protect it from hurricanes, one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

Since he began specializing in ornamental iron in 1938, Simmons has fashioned more than five hundred of the ornate iron gates, fences, balconies, and window grills that now grace the city of Charleston. "We speak of Charleston as a museum of his work," says Rossie M. Colter, project administrator for the Philip Simmons Foundation, established in 1991.

Simmons was born on Daniel Island, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, in 1912, and came to nearby Charleston in 1919. "I came here especially to go to the Charleston school," Simmons says. "It was an exciting time for me." When he was 13 years old, Simmons began working in the shop of a local blacksmith named Peter Simmons (no relation to him), a former slave.

Philip Simmons learned and perfected his craft by working on a variety of practical things. "In the Depression times, he fixed cars … [and] he made boat iron," explains John Michael Vlach, Professor of American Studies and Anthropology at The George Washington University and author of Charleston Blacksmith: The Work of Philip Simmons.

Simmons started his work in ornamental iron by mending the corroded parts on people's gates, Colter says. Eventually, he began designing and creating complete works. One of his first design projects was for a man who wanted a driveway gate to keep his children in the yard. Later, that same man asked Simmons to design more ironwork for that house and for other houses that he owned. "That was his groundbreaking," says Colter. "From then on, it was word of mouth."

Philip Simmons eventually took over Peter Simmons' shop, and moved it several times over the years. (Some of the sites are now buried under new roads and buildings.) "Every time I moved, I moved the workshop with me," says Simmons. In the 1970s, Simmons brought his shop to 30 Blake Street, where he moved into a 1940s bungalow.

In the workshop at 30 Blake Street, Simmons continued to create intricate and beautiful ironwork using a simple hammer and anvil; the only power tools in the shop are a sander and a welder. His greatest tools were his skill and the knowledge handed down to him by Peter Simmons. "It's not about the tools, it's about the touch, and he has the touch," Vlach says.

In 1976, Simmons was invited to the Festival of American Folklife on the Mall in Washington, D.C. During the festival, using portable tools, Simmons created the "Star and Fish" gate that is now in the collection of the National Museum of American History. Then, in 1982, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Simmons its National Heritage Fellowship, which recognizes master folk and traditional artists.

Simmons has also received multiple awards from the state of South Carolina, including the "Order of the Palmetto," the highest award given in the state. He is revered in Charleston, where a life-size statue of him stands in the Philip Simmons Children's Garden, a community revitalization project in his Eastside neighborhood. "He's become a tremendously loved hero by living a modest life," Vlach says.

Simmons inherited the workshop from his mentor, Peter Simmons, who had inherited it from his father. It's a wooden frame covered with metal sheets, and parts of it date to the mid-1800s. As pieces of the metal corroded over the years, Simmons has replaced them with more tin. The structure, which is still a working shop, needs to be stabilized in order to ensure its survival. "It's amazing it hasn't fallen down" in a hurricane, says Colter.

The two structures "should be preserved because [Simmons] is important," Vlach says. "When you think about the whole history of blacksmithing in South Carolina or in Charleston in particular, [it's important to be able to see]… where did they work, where did they live, the whole human process of how the thing that they make… is still tied to them," he says.

The Philip Simmons Foundation hopes to eventually purchase Simmons' house and shop and preserve them. (A second house on the property, a two-story 1890s wooden frame house, is being sold to Simmons' grandson.) Colter says she would like the workshop to remain a working shop. She thinks it could, along with the bungalow where Simmons still lives, become a place where interns and apprentices can come to study Simmons' ironworking techniques and his artistic style. Apprentices could stay in the house, which was renovated and modernized a few years ago, and work in the old shop. The shop could also be open to the public for tours.

Simmons himself would like the shop, which is now run by his nephew and cousin, to remain open. "In the future, I would like to see them carry on the art. They're doing beautiful art now in that same old shop. That shop is serving four generations … and I would like to see the door stay open."

For now, tourists still come several times a day to 30 Blake Street to watch the work in the shop and to shake the hand of the man whose works they have admired on the streets of Charleston. Simmons hopes that the knowledge behind that art will live on: "Somebody passed it to me," he says, "and I want to pass it on."

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