In 1836, the city of Charleston completed a new sea wall at the southeastern tip of the city, and contemplated building a park along South Bay Street extending north along East Bay Street. Short of funds, the city decided instead to subdivide the East Bay land into nine lots and sell them to pay for a smaller park along the South Battery.Kenneth and Martha Severens, "The Robert William Roper House, Charleston, South Carolina," The Magazine Antiques, May 1990. In May 1838, Robert W. Roper bought "Lot 5" and "Lot 6" (each with fifty feet of frontage along East Bay Street), the deed containing one restriction: "...that no house less than three stories high shall be erected thereon."Charleston County Register, Deed Book U-10, page 306 and page 312. In August 1839, having built his house tight to the north property line, Roper bought an additional eleven feet of frontage (part of "Lot 7") from his northerly neighbor, Isaac E. Holmes, an acquisition that allowed Roper to run a driveway around the north side of his house to the two-story carriage house at the back of the lot.Charleston County Register, Deed Book Y-10, page 177. When Roper died in 1845 he left to his wife, Martha Rutledge Roper, "his 560-acre Point Comfort Plantation with ninety-six slaves and the East Battery house." In April 1848, title to the house (including all 111 feet of East Bay frontage) was transferred to her,Charleston County Register, Deed Book Z-11, page 561. and in 1851, Mrs. Roper sold the house to Mary Coachman Allston.Charleston County Register, Deed Book M-12, page 358.
