Historic Charleston A Legacy of Architecture and Southern Charm Story and photos by Richard Varr
“He was here to party,” quips Ford, who’s leading us on a local Bulldog History Tour. “They also drank 40 toasts in his honor.” Below the building, the thick brick walls of the dark Provost Dungeon originally stored traders’ merchandise including rice, tea, and even gunpowder. Tours today highlight how the British turned it into a prison during the American Revolution. Another stop takes us to the High Battery along East Battery Street with sweeping views of Charleston Harbor. From its seawall and promenade, we look out to Fort Sumter and the outer islands. “There’s an old saying that Charleston lies on the point of land where the Ashley and Cooper rivers meet to form the Atlantic Ocean—at least, that’s Charleston’s viewpoint,” Ford jokes. “Back in the 18th- and 19th- century, you would have seen the tall ships with their masts that anchored here.” The shoreline skirts a cluster of antebellum homes painted in cool colors, many once owned by planter families growing rice—Carolina Gold as it’s called— with their wealth built from slave labor. Walking north,
It only takes a short walk-through leafy parks and quaint neighborhoods to capture the essence of historic Charleston. A skyline with the multi-tiered steeples of St. Michael’s and St. Philip’s churches tower over clusters of colonial and antebellum homes with their muted pastel-hued facades. Palm trees sway in soft breezes juxtaposed by the branches of sturdy live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Historic markers detail the dramatic moments endured by this 355-year-old port city. As I walk through some of the remaining cobbled streets, I can only imagine what happened here— pirate raids led by the infamous Blackbeard and shackled enslaved Africans stepping onto the shores of a new continent for the first time; British soldiers storming the city during the American Revolution; and Confederate gunners pummeling Fort Sumter in 1861 to kick off the Civil War. You might say this port city has a comprehensive representation of American history. Like Old City Philadelphia and what’s seen along Boston’s Freedom Trail, for example, many of Charleston’s colonial and antebellum sites remain today—forts, places of worship, restored houses and even old jails, to name a few. And not surprisingly, George Washington slept here too. In fact, one of the city’s most historic sites has a President Washington highlight of its own. The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon, a stately Georgian Palladian-style building opened in 1771 to host public meetings, markets, elegant events, and, sadly, even slave auctions. Its spacious Great Hall trimmed with temple-style colonnades is where South Carolina delegates ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1788. “But even after all of that history, everyone’s favorite story is about President Washington attending a ball in his honor in the Great Hall in 1791,” explains tour guide Zach Ford. “According to the President’s journal, he danced with 253 of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. And he also described that he wore out a pair of slippers dancing the minuet.”
Along the High Battery promenade on East Battery Street
HISTORIC CHARLESTON
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