S.C. Encyclopedia | An internationally known brothel, the Sunset Lodge, founded about 1936, was located in a white frame house adorned by neon on U.S. Highway 17 originally three miles south of Georgetown’s limits. The business was reportedly encouraged by business leaders, including Tom Yawkey, a Massachusetts millionaire who owned a resort home near Georgetown. They wanted to divert the attentions of workers building the International Paper Company mill at Georgetown from their local women.
The lodge’s past is cloaked in legend and myth, but researchers generally agree that the clientele included servicemen, merchant seamen, college students, millionaires, and reportedly members of Yawkey’s Boston Red Sox baseball team, which passed through en route to spring training in Florida. State legislators were also frequent visitors.
Hazel Weiss, who was said to be a former schoolteacher and was born Hazel Bennett in Indiana, owned Sunset Lodge for most of its life. She retained doctors to ensure that her employees were disease-free. According to Georgetown residents, Weiss was the largest yearly donor to the major organized charity in Georgetown. A reporter said that she ruled her business with an iron hand, refusing to tolerate drunks or rowdies and insisting on standards of behavior and dress.
Sunset Lodge developed such traditions as the baseball stopover, the dispensing of Christmas funds to deputies and patrolmen at Thanksgiving, the spring week when the lodge was open only to state legislators, and Hazel’s birthday party, when Georgetown’s socially elite (men only) were invited.
Sheriff Woodrow Carter closed the lodge, which had been protected by officers and granted anonymity by the press, in December 1969. Weiss moved to Charleston and then returned to Indiana, where she reportedly died in the 1970s. The structure housing the business burned in the late 1990s.
— Excerpted from an entry by Robert A. Pierce. This entry hasn’t been updated since 2006. To read more about this or 2,000 other entries about South Carolina, check out The South Carolina Encyclopedia, published in 2006 by USC Press. (Information used by permission.)
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!
Fresh out of college I moved to Georgetown in January, 1970 to teach at Winyah High School. As a history teacher and it being the start of a new decade my first assignment for my students was for them to write about the most important events in the decade of the ’60’s. There were a great number of comments about significant events but the most interesting one was: Sheriff Carter shutdown the Sunset Lodge. I guess I got to Georgetown too late.
In the 60’s my Dad traveled for the pharmaceutical company, Wyeth Lab’s. On school holidays it was my great pleasure to travel with him. As it happened the extent of my sex education, from my Dad anyway, coincided with our drive to Georgetown northward to MD’s and Hospitals on which he called. Taking Highwy 17N from Charleston we reached the outskirts of Georgetown and, inevitably, the Sunset Lodge. Passing it at 55 mph, Dad said sternly, “You see those buildings over there?” “Yeah”, I replied. He said sternly, “That’s a ho’house, don’t evah go there.” So, that was it, without school board approval, my Dad’s version of “the conversation “. I can’t pass it now without a smile and a fond recollection of a more innocent time, at least in my family.
Columbian David Hodges has done considerable research on the Lodge. He travels around the state speaking to Garden Clubs, Civic Clubs and Historical venues about the Lodge, Mrs. Weiss and relates many of the stories about the Lodge. Last I heard he was writing a vignette about what he has learned
While growing up in Georgetown, a couple times I had visitors to Georgetown ask me to direct them to Sunset lodge & 1 guy gave me $10.00 for the information.
My family lived and some still live in Georgetown. In the mid 50’s, I attended Winyah HS. Sunset Lodge was a well known establishment and the recipient of much attention. Occasionally, some of the “boys” would place ” We give GREEN STAMPS” signs in the driveway… much fun! Later, after highschool, I worked for my uncle, delivering fresh eggs…. Ms. Weiss had some really interesting stories to tell, especially about some of my uncles and cousins. Times were very different then!
My friend Bob Pierce is credited with much of this account which is said to be one of his contributions to the The South Carolina Encyclopedia. I find this hard to believe. Bob was such a fine upstanding gentleman who could never lower himself to frequent such a place. There Dianne, I’ve done it. I’ve defended my friends name and reputation. RIP my friend……
It’s a dump now that should be torn down buildings are old an trashy an they charge so much for the poor unfortunate people that has no place to go .its an ugly site for entering Georgetown,