C H A R T I N G A N E W CO U R S E
C H A R T I N G A N E W CO U R S E
STEVENS TOWING
TUCKED ALONG THE BANKS OF THE WADMALAW RIVER, WHERE THE INTRACOASTAL WATERWAY FLOWS TOWARD THE ATLANTIC, SITS A SHIPYARD ANCHORED BY ONE OF THE MOST STUNNING EXAMPLES OF WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HIGH DESIGN, HISTORIC PRESERVATION AND A FRESH APPROACH TO A FAMILY-RUN BUSINESS COLLIDE TO TRANSFORM AN INDUSTRIAL WORKPLACE INTO AN AESTHETIC INSPIRATION. AND ALMOST NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT IT.
LANDSCAPE
Adventure. Exploration. Wild weather and international intrigue on the high seas. When it comes to Stevens Towing, the 108-yearold maritime transport and freight company set on a tiny Lowcountry spit known as Yonges Island, everything defies expectations. It is fitting, poetic even, that Stevens Towing is headquartered in one of the most stunning commercial structures in the Charleston area; glassed-in conference areas and pristinely preserved brick edifices overlook a working shipping center with a 75-piece flotilla, from tugboats to barges, in varying sizes and service capabilities. Both Stevens Towing, now run by fourth-generation scion Johnson Stevens, and its iconic location inside a newly restored former post house, are under-the-radar landmarks whose past, present and future are firmly anchored in a spirit of originality. Today, thanks to Johnson’s commitment to quality, this unique property also presents a vision of the modern workplace in which industrial expertise, coastal beauty and historic preservation are all natural aspects of business as usual. None of it came about in a way that can be described as direct or linear, but ask any one of the more than 250 people who come to work there each day, and they will tell you that the path to where they are now was nonetheless a natural progression. A few, those who are given to sailors’ stories and superstition, swear the way it all unfolded was even predestined. That’s because when Johnson took over for his father, Bill Stevens, in 2013, it was the logical passing of the baton from one generation to the next, and company tradition by that point. But Johnson’s position wasn’t always guaranteed, at least not in his mind, nor was he fully prepared for the moment when it came. Johnson initially sidestepped entry into the family business, eschewing the line of succession in favor of work in destinations farther afield. He went out west to fly-fish for a few months, traveled to various destinations pursuing wildlife in between and eventually got a gig guiding fishing charters around the Caribbean. “It started out as just a couple of months,” Johnson says, “but eventually I was following the seasonal circuit, going to Panama, Costa Rica, then on into Mexico. I lived the life...until one day I got a phone call saying I needed to be at work on Monday and that was the end of that.” With his father’s health in decline, Johnson returned home
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to begin steering his family’s business toward the future. Fortunately, he had the support of a pretty seasoned crew— from his mother, Susan, a guiding matriarch who knows all the stories and became a sort of conduit connecting Johnson’s era to his father’s, to the outfit’s swashbuckling veteran captain, Scott White, who has served as Stevens’s main pilot for more than twenty years. Add in a ballooning crew of engineers, electricians, welders, shipfitters, crane operators, painters, carpenters, mechanics, salesmen, accountants, pipefitters and blasters, maintenance experts, deckhands and all-around loyalists—including many who boast of multiple-generation lineages of their own—and Johnson found his footing. In addition to forging ahead as Stevens Towing’s new leader, Johnson devoted himself to honoring his father’s legacy. That commitment extended not just to elevating the business but also to raising the bar on the company’s headquarters, a dream his father had held for years. Johnson’s wife, Dillard, whom he had married in the interim, was happy to weigh in. A childhood friend whose family’s own seafaring business, founded in 1919, is equally as anchored in the area, thanks to their expertise in commercial diving and marine construction, Dillard introduced Johnson to the interior designer Jenny Keenan. A partnership was born and Jenny set about reimagining the company’s historic headquarters in a way that would reflect the fresh vision of a new generation of leadership. Johnson’s rise is a modern tale of derring-do in which the zeal for experimental design mimics an encompassing approach to work and life. At Stevens Towing, the aesthetic perspective mimics the family’s overall ethos: all-in and willing to take risks. Design is just an extension of the company’s culture, after all, and at the company the quality of work and the quality of life go hand in hand. The origins of this mindset go back to the company’s founding, in the late-1870s, when brothers Joseph Stanyarne Stevens and William Yates Stevens recognized a growing need for water-borne transport to ferry produce, perishables, cotton and other crops and material goods to and from points of sale up and down the coast. At the time, bridges were few and far between and the preferred modes of delivery—railroads, horses, oxcarts and, later,
automobiles—weren’t sufficient to meet growing demand. Flooding issues and lax road maintenance presented additional challenges. The Stevens brothers built their business using a single boat, the Mary Draper, but expansion came swiftly. In 1913, Stevens Line Company was formed to incorporate trucks, trailers, barges, freight vessels and manpower. By the 1970s, the family had built a thriving business that
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continued to broaden their reach and services under the direction of Johnson’s father, Bill, and the name changed to Stevens Towing.
mapped the milestones of the island, the company and the building it now occupies in extreme detail, an ongoing project that is well into its next chapter.
When the old post office finally shuttered for good in the mid-1980s and the Stevens family set about converting what they didn’t already occupy into their primary office complex, the goal was to do more than renovate and maintain the structure. They wanted to turn it into something special and significant that would reflect its importance as a hub of Lowcountry island life during the 19th and 20th centuries.
“This work, what we’ve done, was definitely Bill’s dream first,” says Dillard. “When he passed away, we knew the time had come to make that a reality. For Bill, the most important thing was for Johnson and his brother, Robert, to love coming to work every day.”
“The railroad ended here, on the other side of the post office,” Johnson explains, “and this was a station for all of the passengers. They would come here, but so would the mail and anything else being brought in. If you bought a car, the salesman would come here, take you on one of our boats back to Edisto and stay with you long enough to teach you how to drive it. After that, he’d ride back and do it all over again. Same with the produce that we’d ferry from the farms to Charleston so that the farmers could make a living. It was a really important spot.” The building was always special to Bill, whose deep connection to the area and community was evident to everyone he encountered—both inside and outside the company. And though Bill passed away a few years back, his legacy looms large.
When the family initially contacted Jenny Keenan, the designer didn’t know what to expect. “That first visit, I wasn’t sure what my team and I would find when we went out to Yonges Island,” she says, “but I fell in love with it—the people, the place, four generations of family and business history. It’s pretty special and we’ve been really lucky to have it as our workplace, too, during this project.” The first goal was to open up the layout to create a lighter, brighter interior. “Most of the inside had already been gutted, and we wanted to work with their incredible architect, Eddie Fava, to preserve its bones and beautiful centuries-old brick walls while also modernizing it,” Jenny says. “The result is a mix of antique and vintage and new elements, which is perfect.”
WHEN THE OLD POST OFFICE FINALLY SHUTTERED FOR GOOD IN THE MID-1980s AND THE STEVENS FAMILY SET ABOUT CONVERTING WHAT THEY DIDN’T ALREADY OCCUPY INTO THEIR PRIMARY OFFICE COMPLEX, THE GOAL WAS TO DO MORE THAN RENOVATE AND MAINTAIN THE STRUCTURE. THEY WANTED TO TURN IT INTO SOMETHING SPECIAL AND SIGNIFICANT THAT WOULD REFLECT ITS IMPORTANCE AS A HUB OF LOWCOUNTRY ISLAND LIFE DURING THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES.
“Bill Stevens is the reason I came to work here, and Bill Stevens is the reason I’ll never leave,” says Captain Scott White. “He loved this island and this building so much. It was an extension of his family.” Raised in a shrimping family in McClellanville, South Carolina, just up the coast, Scott has witnessed Stevens’s growth firsthand. He has also overseen more trips than anyone else on the team, occasionally with Johnson onboard. With its current fleet of 12 towboats, a handful of 500-ton floating cranes, 50 barges and a bustling shipyard, Stevens’s current workload is varied and, in Scott’s case, requires patience, flexibility and a level of zen more commonly associated with monks. “We do a little bit of everything,” Scott says. “We tow vessels all over the world, from bringing a replica of Air Force One down from Norfolk, Virginia, to carrying freight to the Middle East to trips to Alaska by way of western waterways. Sometimes there’s cargo involved; sometimes the ship itself is the cargo. We also tow boats in need of repair to Yonges Island, where our shipyard rebuilds them to get them back on the water.” Scott’s wife, Mathilde Dumond, also works there in the capacity of training and development. Her knowledge of the company and the island itself is unparalleled. She has
Jenny used metal-framed glass walls to create defined meeting and working spaces. She also installed fixtures from Urban Electric that have coastal and industrial echoes, alongside vintage pieces and weathered details to balance the space’s original design and materials against a fresh aesthetic befitting a new, younger generation. The design team’s work was recently recognized with a Carolopolis award for excellence in historic preservation.
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Beyond the building, the view is no less breathtaking and unique. The waters of nearby Botany Bay are home to frisky pods of curious dolphins, grazing nurse sharks, unsullied marshlands and the kind of preserved coastal beauty that remains untouched as if frozen in time. The commute is not typical but it is stunning. As part of the restoration efforts, the family donated a cache of historical artifacts and materials from the post office itself—metal mailboxes, equipment, tools—to the Old Exchange Building on East Bay Street in downtown Charleston, where it remains on display today.
From the unshakable loyalty of the men and women who work there to the reputation and recognition it enjoys well beyond these local waters, Stevens Towing is built on a fearless thirst for innovation and an uncompromising commitment to excellence and community. “I learned early on,” Johnson’s mother, Susan, says, “that this is way more than a business, and it’s way more than a job. For all of us, top to bottom, it’s a lifestyle and we take pride in that.”
An early map of the waterways that Stevens Towing has traversed for more than a century, courtesy of Charleston Library Society.
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Johnson Stevens at the helm.
Island Girl, one of the fleet’s larger tugboats, takes to the water.
Barnacles on seasoned equipment.
A shore bird at attention.
A view from the tug.
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A colorful lookout.
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The marsh near Botany Bay.
Looking out from the deck.
Captain Scott White.
West Wycombe pendants in a first-floor meeting space.
Kensington and Pop fixtures in the entry.
Interior designer Jenny Keenan.
Chiltern in the upstairs conference room.
Johnson and Dillard Stevens.
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B O TA N Y B AY EDISTO BEACH S AT U R D AY, S E P T E M B E R 5 , 2 0 2 0 1:57PM