The Sword Gate House Math Gets Ambitious

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The Sword Gate House at 32 Legare St. is back on the market at $35 million. That number is the story, so let's run it.

The current owners paid $10 million for it in the summer of 2020. Asking $35 million six years later is 3.5 times the purchase price.

The property is 17,142 square feet on 0.87 acres. At $35 million, that works out to roughly $2,040 a foot. The 2020 sale closed at about $583 a foot. Same square footage, same lot.

Now the comp. Charleston's record for a single-family sale is $21,575,000, set last November at 51 East Bay St., the Caspar Christian Schutt House. That deal covered more than 15,700 square feet across four structures, which pencils out near $1,375 a foot.

So the Sword Gate ask sits about 62% above the record. That is a long jump past the current top of the market.

And then there's the house's own history with big numbers.

It went on the market in April 2009 at $23 million. It finally sold in 2020, after the asking price had been cut to $13,999,000 on the last listing, for $10 million. That is eleven years from first ask to closing, and a final price 57% under where it started.

The one other recent attempt in this tier went sideways too. The Drayton House at 25 East Battery listed at $28 million in November 2025, and the Post & Courier reports it has since come off the market.

In fairness to the seller, this is not the same house it was in 2009. The owners restored it, brought in designer Cortney Bishop, and per the Post & Courier, added another kitchen. It now has three. Leslie Turner of Maison Real Estate has the listing, and the Post & Courier reports the furniture is negotiable.

For the money, you get a Federal-era main house dating to around 1803 with eight bedrooms, a carriage house, a pool and pool house, a garage, and three levels of piazzas facing a very old magnolia. It is the oldest house on Legare Street.

Plus the gates. Ironworker Christopher Werner was hired to make a pair for the city's Guard House at Meeting and Broad. He made two sets. The city only wanted one, so the spare went to British consul George Hopley, who put it up at 32 Legare in 1849. The twin set ended up at The Citadel's main entrance, gold swords and all.

The back wing was a French girls' school run by Madame Talvande starting in 1819. A granddaughter of Abraham Lincoln owned it in the 1930s, the Post & Courier notes. It has been a guest house and an inn. It has been subdivided and stitched back together. A $10 million sale in 2020 made it the most expensive house in the city at the time.

Pricing a one-off like this is part art, part dare. There are no true comps for a nearly one-acre walled compound South of Broad, and the seller gets to set the opening bid. The market gets to answer.

The two numbers to watch from here are days on market and the date of the first price change.

Sources: Galerie (asking price, listing agent, size, lot, designer, amenities), Maison Real Estate (2020 listing history and sale price), Wikipedia (gate history, Talvande school, 2009 listing, owner history), Charleston.com (Guard House gates and The Citadel twin), Who's On The Move (51 East Bay record sale), Charleston Real Estate (25 East Battery list price and date) and the Post & Courier (third kitchen, negotiable furnishings, Drayton House withdrawal)