Bluffton, S.C. — The Heyward House on Boundary Street in Old Town Bluffton has been taken off the market after months of community pressure, the Historic Bluffton Foundation Board of Directors said in an online posting.
The foundation listed the museum headquarters for sale in June, saying the house’s finances and operations had grown too costly. The 1841 home was one of 15 that survived the 1863 Burning of Bluffton; eight of those homes remain.
Board members reversed the sale plan after hearing from locals and visitors who called the site an active museum and communal space central to Bluffton’s identity. The foundation is now asking for renewed memberships, donations for repairs and programs, plus volunteer docents and preservation skills.
Built by enslaved workers for plantation owner John J. Cole as a summer home, the house was purchased in 1998 by the Historic Bluffton Foundation, which spent a decade renovating it into a museum and once used it as the town welcome center.
The Heyward House Museum is owned and operated by the Historic Bluffton Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to Bluffton’s culture and history, and still includes an 1841 cabin described as the last remaining enslaved-person cabin in Bluffton.
