Sweetgrass pavilion to be dedicated

Sweetgrass basketmaking culture, preserved on the sides of Mount Pleasant's roadways for generations, has been given a special place in a new park near the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.

Mount Pleasant will dedicate the Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Pavilion at 2 p.m. Sunday, just after the Memorial Waterfront Park's grand opening Friday.

The park, complete with a visitor's center, war memorial, cafe and fishing pier, sits along Wingo Way just under the U.S. Highway 17 approach to the bridge.

The pavilion, an open-air structure with sliding barn-like doors and shaded porches, offers an exhibit of sweetgrass basketmaking history and room for basket sewers to sell their wares.

Michael Allen, National Parks Service Gullah/Geechee coordinator, said that erecting a building has been a process that began in 1997 when the town first recognized the significance of the roadside basket stand by placing a historical marker along U.S. 17 at the intersection of Hamlin Road.

The location is thought to be near the site of the first basket stand on U.S. Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant.

The structure can serve as a model for how other communities can preserve and promote history along the Gullah-Geechee corridor, he said. "This is a representation and acknowledgement of the sacrifice, contribution and heritage of three centuries of history that has been put in a place and that can be experienced by all," Allen said.

Mount Pleasant Councilwoman Thomasena Stokes-Marshall, taking a sneak preview of the facility, couldn't stop smiling and said she was a little overwhelmed.

The interior of the structure includes historical photographs, information on basketmaking history and area stories including that of Peter and Pearl Ascue, who have amassed one of the area's largest collections of sweetgrass baskets. Peter Ascue started the collection in the 1970s when he accepted baskets as payments for vehicle repairs.

Exhibit planner Carol Poplin, who is senior project manager of The History Workshop, said designing an exhibit within the building posed an interesting challenge because the barn doors slide open to let the breeze through and she didn't have much wall space to work with. Instead, she created three movable kiosks trimmed with wood panels and tin roofs to resemble basket stands.

"It really captures the essence of it," Stokes-Marshall said of the exhibit.

The pavilion also can be seen as a monument to the growing relationship between the basketmaking community and the town of Mount Pleasant and surrounding area, Allen said. In addition to the historical marker, legislators have named a portion of U.S. Highway 17 the Sweetgrass Basket Maker Highway. Mount Pleasant and Charleston County implemented a basketmaker overlay district that allows basket sewers to keep their stands along the highway right of way from Long Point Road to Porchers Bluff Road.

The community's roughly 500 basketmakers will be allowed to set up and sell their baskets from the pavilion 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily on a rotating schedule.

The Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival Association has leased the facility from the town and has selected which basket sewers will work when through a lottery drawing system with basketmakers who have volunteered and supported the festival association getting first draw, said Stokes-Marshall. Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival project director Cambridge Jenkins II, will serve as the pavilion's manager.

The town is the first to have a physical structure to recognize the Gullah/Geechee culture along the corridor, a national heritage area, Allen said.

"This is an encouraging thing," he said.