The Dewberry Charleston

Almost every hotel in downtown Charleston sells the same century. The Dewberry sells a different one, and that is the entire decision here. If the city's antebellum-inn look wears on you by day two, this is the antidote. If you flew in specifically for canopy beds and a piazza, you will spend the week feeling like you checked into the wrong town.

The hotel is at the top of the lower peninsula, on the Meeting Street side of Marion Square, one block east of Upper King. The building is seven stories of marble and brick with an 8th-floor rooftop terrace on top of it, which in a city of steeples and stucco reads as either a relief or an insult depending on your taste.

A federal office building, converted

The building went up in 1964-65 as the L. Mendel Rivers Federal Building, named in 1964 for the congressman L. Mendel Rivers. It was a seven-story General Services Administration office block, mid-century modern, sitting across Meeting Street from Marion Square. Hurricane Floyd damaged it in 1999 and it was vacated.

It sat empty until January 2008, when John Dewberry bought it. Dewberry is an Atlanta commercial real estate developer and a former Georgia Tech quarterback, and he named the hotel after his late father, Gary Dewberry. The conversion took eight years. TOWN Carolina puts the cost at $77 million. The hotel opened in 2016.

What is unusual about the project is how much of the old building is still there. EM Structural, the engineering firm on the job, describes the marble-and-brick facade as largely intact across the 120,000 square feet on its two-acre site, with the interior essentially recreated behind it. Salvaged facade marble was cut down into table tops for the rooftop dining terrace.

The preservation politics cut both ways. The building sits inside the Charleston Historic District, listed on the National Register in 1978, though the district's nomination document never says whether this building counted as contributing or as an intrusion. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has listed The Dewberry in Historic Hotels of America since 2016. A 1964 government office block is now, formally, one of Charleston's historic hotels.

The rooms and the public spaces

The palette is marble, brass and dark wood, and it is consistent everywhere. Bathrooms are wrapped in marble quarried in Danby, Vermont. Rooms have custom Stickley armoires with a botanical pattern made for the hotel, mattresses and linens imported from Ireland, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a minibar stocked by the kitchen rather than a vending contract.

Sizes run from the 290-square-foot Signature King up through the 336-square-foot Grand King, the 380-square-foot Grand Queen (two queens, sleeps four), a 425-square-foot One-Bedroom Suite, and the 511-square-foot Charleston Flats, which occupy the corners of every floor and have hardwood floors, a separate living room, and a cast iron soaking tub. There is also a one-off designer suite, the John Derian Flat, done in Derian's decoupage work.

Downstairs, the ground floor holds a lobby, The Shop (two small boutiques of antiques, jewelry and sundries), and The Living Room. The spa has cypress-covered walls, uses Natura Bissé products, and is open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily; its booking form asks whether you are a hotel guest, so non-guests can book treatments. The fitness studio on the second floor is open 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. and has Peloton bikes. Guests get 21-gear Specialized bicycles at no charge and can use the hotel's Volvo house cars for drop-offs at select downtown addresses.

Two things the amenity list does not include: a pool, and pets. Neither is on offer.

The bars, and the restaurant that isn't there

The Living Room is the reason a lot of people who are not staying here walk in the door. It is mid-century furniture, a reading library, and a large brass bar, open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until midnight on Friday and Saturday. Seating is first come, first served. The wooden bowls behind the bar were turned by the local artist Hugh Jeffers from a 150-year-old white oak that once stood nearby. There is a dress code, mild but real: collared shirts for men, no athletic wear, no swimsuits or cover-ups. Children are welcome here.

Citrus Club is the 8th-floor rooftop bar, which the hotel bills as the highest rooftop in Charleston. It is 21 and over, open noon to 10 p.m. daily, with reservations taken only in the noon to 2 p.m. lunch window and walk-in seating after that. It is open to the public, and the view over Marion Square and the steeples west of it is the best argument for the whole building. Go early on a weekend or expect to wait.

Now the honest part. Henrietta's, the French brasserie that opened with the hotel in the summer of 2016, closed in 2020 and has not reopened. The Post and Courier reported in March 2025 that the hotel was planning a new, independent-minded restaurant for the space under executive chef Alex Ursprung, and that the room had been used for private events in the meantime. As of mid-2026 the hotel's own dining page still lists only The Living Room and Citrus Club. Plan on breakfast at The Living Room and dinner somewhere else.

Where you actually are

Marion Square is 10 acres bounded by Calhoun, Meeting, Tobacco and King. It was the parade ground for the state arsenal, and The Citadel occupied that arsenal from 1843 until it moved in 1922. The John C. Calhoun monument that stood over the square for more than a century was removed by City Council in June 2020; a Holocaust memorial and a Wade Hampton obelisk are still there. On Saturdays from April 4 to November 21 in 2026, the Charleston Farmers Market runs in the square from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., closed July 4 and November 28. That is roughly across the street from the front door.

The Charleston Museum is a block north at 360 Meeting Street, with the Visitor Center across from it. Upper King Street, which is where most of the city's best restaurants and bars are, starts one block west and runs north from Calhoun. The historic core below Broad is a longer walk: the Battery is about a mile and a half south, half an hour on foot, and most people take a car or a bike for that end of the peninsula.

Who should book it, and who shouldn't

Book it if Charleston's inn aesthetic tires you. Three days of chintz, portraits and creaking heart pine wears some travelers down, and this is the only downtown hotel that gives you a quiet modern room to come back to. Book it if you care about materials, if you want a hotel bar you would actually drink in, or if your evenings are going to happen on Upper King and you would rather walk than drive.

It also works well for couples for reasons that have nothing to do with romance packaging: no pool means no pool noise, no pets means no barking, the rooftop is adults-only, and the rooms are genuinely quiet.

Skip it if the antebellum thing is the point of your trip. Some travelers come to Charleston to sleep in a nineteenth-century house with a piazza and a garden, and this building will feel like a business hotel with better taste. Skip it if you are traveling with kids, if you need a pool, or if you want to walk out the door into Rainbow Row and the Battery, which are at the far south end of the peninsula. And skip it if you want a full-service hotel restaurant, at least until the new one opens.

How it compares

Hotel Bennett is the direct comparison. It is on the other side of the same square at 404 King Street, it opened much more recently, and it does the opposite thing: pale stone, chandeliers, a European grand-hotel look, plus a pool and a full restaurant. If you want a bigger, brighter, more traditional luxury hotel in the same location, that is the one. The Dewberry is darker, smaller and more particular.

At the other end, Planters Inn and the historic inns south of Calhoun are the real alternative for travelers who want the Charleston of the postcards. They put you in the middle of the old city, in buildings a century and a half older, with a completely different room to sleep in. The two are not interchangeable, and people who book the wrong one are disappointed for the whole trip.

Rates at all of these move hard with the calendar, so compare current pricing rather than any number you read here. Our where to stay in Charleston guide breaks down the neighborhoods and the booking options. For current hours, rooms and policies, check thedewberrycharleston.com directly; the figures above reflect the hotel's published information as of mid-2026.