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Business partners Robert Samples and George Manahan have joked about Charleston’s white elephants. But they never thought they’d end up with their own.
After Samples and Manahan bought a five-story office building at 222 Capitol St., work crews made an interesting discovery. Lurking under the plaster of the first floor entryway was a 10-foot sign advertising the White Elephant Saloon. That’s what the lettering said, anyway, as if the giant painting of the white elephant left any doubt.
As to the saloon’s history, Manahan and Samples have few clues.
“Looking at the [type] fonts, our creative staff think it’s from the late 1800s — it’s an 1880s, 1890s kind of font,” said Manahan, whose public relations firm occupies the fourth floor of the building.
Built by Charleston’s influential Cox family, 222 Capitol St. has most recently been home to Lance’s card and gift shop, a five-story time capsule of games, party favors, cards, decorative items and baubles where patrons could find merchandise dating back to the 1950s — often with their original price tags still in effect.
The building had been vacant for years when Samples and Manahan joined forces in December to buy it. Samples recently moved his consulting business, RMS Strategies, onto the fifth floor. Manahan is on the fourth, and the partners intend to lease out the rest.
Manahan and Samples have deduced that the elephant painting was originally on an exterior wall, and that the bar must have been inside the building next door to theirs. The current structure was built in 1910, and the building that sat at 222 Capitol St. before that was torn down in 1880, so the White Elephant Saloon must have been in business at some point during that 30-year window.
Local historian Richard Andre has confirmed the time period seems about right for a bar on Capitol Street. “In the 1880s there were shooting galleries downtown,” said Manahan. “Capitol Street was a pretty rough place.”
But Andre and other historians don’t know anything about the White Elephant Saloon. There are apparently no photographs of it, and no one remembers hearing anyone talk about it.
“The next step is to go to the unofficial historians,” Samples said. He hopes some Charleston old-timers may remember talk of the saloon.
Manahan and Samples hope to preserve and perhaps restore the old sign. At one time, they talked about opening a bar and restaurant on the first floor and incorporating the floor-to-ceiling sign into the décor.
“I was thinking we should restore it, but not repaint it, because it looks more original,” said Samples.
The partners have been approached by someone interested in opening a brew pub on the first floor. There have been a few other nibbles, but no one has yet signed a lease for the space. They hope whoever moves into the first floor of the building decides to keep the elephant.
If a tenant absolutely insists, Manahan said, they’ll cover the elephant up with drywall. But they’ll make sure the elephant is not destroyed in the process.
“The idea is to preserve it,” he said. | 
