Inside the Edmonston-Alston House
East Battery turns into East Bay Street where 13 row houses streaked in Caribbean blue, yellow, green, and pink hues make up Rainbow Row, one of, if not the city’s most photographed sites. The simple Georgian-style homes primarily from the late 1700s are a testament to the city’s enduring architectural heritage. Along the Battery, the Edmonston-Alston House built in 1825 by shipping merchant Charles Edmonston was sold just 13 years later to the second owner, rice planter Charles Alston. He embellished the late Federal-style home by adding Greek revival Corinthian columns and the cast iron balconies we see today. It’s from where Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard was said to have watched the bombing of Fort Sumter at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861. Inside, the family’s silver servers, paintings, fine furniture, and other items remain today. Our tour continues with a stop at another historic home, the Nathaniel Russell House on Meeting Street, a National Historic Landmark and most noted for its cantilevered free-flying, spiraling staircase. “It goes up three floors without any support from the wall itself. It’s an architectural marvel,” notes Ford. Completed in 1808, the home’s neoclassical design
features a unique second floor oval drawing room with plaster molding covered in 24-karat gold leaf. Nathaniel Russell was a successful merchant and trader of enslaved people. In the afternoon, I stroll along King Street, another main thoroughfare with its many high-end designer shops, boutiques and restaurants. Charleston menus feature such local and typically Southern favorites as shrimp and grits, creamy she-crab soup including crabmeat and sherry, crab cakes, shrimp, and sausage Frogmore stew, and sesame seed Benne wafer cookies for dessert. Instead, I order a burger topped with smoked Gouda and locally made onion fig jam at the Rusty Bull Brewing Co, a home-grown brewery that’s housed in what was once a horse carriage stall with bricked archways. ”It’s always fun to get to tell people that they’re walking through a space that’s been around since the late 1800s,” says chef and general manager Mark Adams. But when it comes to shopping or even picking up a few souvenirs, I head to the Charleston City Market. There’s something for everyone it seems as I pass vivid paintings of the High Battery waterfront or the
HISTORIC CHARLESTON
COAST TO COAST MAGAZINE FALL 2025 | 12
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