by Jim Morekis
Ironwork: Before the mid-19th century, wrought iron was a widely used ornament. Charleston’s best-known blacksmith, the late Philip Simmons, made a life’s work of continuing the ancient craft of working in wrought iron, and his masterpieces are visible throughout the city, most notably at the Philip Simmons Garden (91 Anson St.), a gate for the visitors center (375 Meeting St.), and the Philip Simmons Children’s Garden at Josiah Smith Tennent House (Blake St. and East Bay St.). Chevaux-de-frise are iron bars on top of a wall through which project some particularly menacing spikes. They became popular after the Denmark Vesey slave revolt conspiracy of 1822. The best example is on the wall of the Miles Brewton House (27 King St.).
Calhoun Mansion
The single largest of Charleston’s surviving grand homes, the 1876 Calhoun Mansion (16 Meeting St., 843/722-8205, www.calhounmansion.net, tours daily 11am-5pm, $15) boasts 35 opulent rooms (with 23 fireplaces!) in a striking Italianate design taking up a whopping 24,000 square feet. The grounds feature some charming garden spaces. A new 90-minute “grand tour” is available for $50 per person; call for an appointment. Though the interiors at this privately run house are packed with antiques and furnishings, be aware that not all of them are accurate or period.
Miles Brewton House
A short distance from the Nathaniel Russell House but much less viewed by visitors, the circa-1769 Miles Brewton House (27 King St.), now a private residence, is maybe the best example of Georgian-Palladian architecture in the world. The almost medieval wrought-iron fencing, or chevaux-de-frise, was added in 1822 after rumors of a slave uprising spread through town. This imposing double house was the site of not one but two headquarters of occupying armies, that of British general Henry Clinton in the Revolution and the federal garrison after the end of the Civil War. The great Susan Pringle Frost, principal founder of the Preservation Society of Charleston and a Brewton descendant, grew up here.
Heyward-Washington House
The Heyward-Washington House (87 Church St., 843/722-0354, www.charlestonmuseum.org, Mon.-Sat. 10am-5pm, Sun. 1pm-5pm, $10 adults, $5 children, combo tickets to Charleston Museum and Manigault House available) takes the regional practice of naming a historic home for the two most significant names in its pedigree to its logical extreme. Built in 1772 by the father of Declaration of Independence signer Thomas Heyward Jr., the house also hosted George Washington during the president’s visit to Charleston in 1791. It’s now owned and operated by the Charleston Museum. The main attraction at the Heyward-Washington House is its masterful woodwork, exemplified by the cabinetry of legendary Charleston carpenter Thomas Elfe. You’ll see his work all over the house, from the mantles to a Chippendale chair. Look for his signature, a figure eight with four diamonds.
Cabbage Row
You know the addresses that make up Cabbage Row (89-91 Church St.) better as “Catfish Row” in Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess (itself based on the book Porgy by the great Charleston author DuBose Heyward, who lived at 76 Church St.). Today this complex—which once housed 10 families—next to the Heyward-Washington House is certainly upgraded from years past, but the row still has the humble appeal of the tenement housing it once was, primarily for freed African American slaves after the Civil War. The house nearby at 94 Church Street was where John C. Calhoun and others drew up the infamous Nullification Acts that eventually led to the South’s secession.
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church
The oldest church in South Carolina, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church (71 Broad St., 843/723-0603, services Sun. 8am and 10:30am, tours available after services) is actually the second sanctuary on this spot. The first church here was made out of black cypress and was called St. Philip’s, or “the English Church,” which was later rebuilt on Church Street. Although the designer is not known, we do know that work on this sanctuary in the style of Christopher Wren began in 1752 as a response to the overflowing congregation at the rebuilt St. Philip’s, and it didn’t finish until 1761. Other than a small addition on the southeast corner in 1883, the St. Michael’s you see today is virtually unchanged, including the massive pulpit, outsized in the style of the time.
St. Michael’s Episcopal Church on Broad Street
Services here over the years hosted such luminaries as Marquis de Lafayette, George Washington, and Robert E. Lee, the latter two of whom are known to have sat in the “governor’s pew.” Two signers of the U.S. Constitution, John Rutledge and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, are buried in the sanctuary. The 186-foot steeple, painted black during the Revolution in a futile effort to disguise it from British guns, actually sank eight inches after the earthquake of 1886. Inside the tower, the famous “bells of St. Michael’s” have an interesting story to tell, having made seven transatlantic voyages for a variety of reasons. They were forged in London’s Whitechapel Foundry and sent over in 1764, only to be brought back as a war prize during the Revolution, after which they were returned to the church. Damaged during the Civil War, they were sent back to the foundry of their birth to be recast and returned to Charleston. In 1989 they were damaged by Hurricane Hugo, sent back to Whitechapel yet again, and returned to St. Michael’s in 1993. Throughout the life span of the bells, the clock tower has continued to tell time, although the minute hand wasn’t added until 1849.
St. Michael’s offers informal, free guided tours to visitors after Sunday services; contact the greeter for more information.
Four Corners of Law
No guidebook is complete without a mention of the famous intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets, nicknamed “Four Corners of Law” for its confluence of federal law (the Post Office building), state law (the state courthouse), municipal law (City Hall), and God’s law (St. Michael’s Episcopal Church). That’s all well and good, but no matter what the tour guides may tell you, the phrase “Four Corners of Law” was actually popularized by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Still, there’s no doubt that this intersection has been key to Charleston from the beginning. Meeting Street was laid out around 1672 and takes its name from the White Meeting House of early Dissenters, meaning non-Anglicans. Broad Street was also referred to as Cooper Street in the early days. Right in the middle of the street once stood the very first statue in the United States, a figure of William Pitt erected in 1766.
WATERFRONT
Charleston’s waterfront is a place where tourism, history, and industry coexist in a largely seamless fashion. Another of the successful—if at one time controversial—developments spearheaded by Mayor Joe Riley, the centerpiece of the harbor area as far as visitors are concerned is Waterfront Park up toward the High Battery. Farther up the Cooper River is Aquarium Wharf, where you’ll find the South Carolina Aquarium, the Fort Sumter Visitor Education Center, and the dock where you board the various harbor ferries, whether to Fort Sumter or just for a calming ride on the Cooper River.
The Great Charleston Earthquake
The Charleston peninsula is bordered by three faults, almost like a picture frame: the Woodstock Fault above North Charleston, the Charleston Fault running along the east bank of the Cooper River, and the Ashley Fault to the west of the Ashley River. On August 31, 1886, one of them buckled, causing one of the most damaging earthquakes ever to hit the United States.
The earthquake of 1886 was actually signaled by several foreshocks earlier that week. Residents of the nearby town of Summerville, South Carolina, 20 miles up the Ashley River, felt a small earthquake after midnight on Friday, August 27. Most slept through it. But soon after dawn a larger shock came, complete with a loud bang, causing many to run outside their houses. That Saturday afternoon another tremor hit Summerville, breaking windows and throwing a bed against a wall in one home. Still, Charlestonians remained unconcerned. Then, that Tuesday at 9:50pm came the big one. With an epicenter somewhere near the Middleton Place Plantation, the Charleston earthquake is estimated to have measured about 7 on the Richter scale. Tremors were felt across half the country, with the ground shaking in Chicago and a church damaged in
Indianapolis. A dam 120 miles away in Aiken, South Carolina, immediately gave way, washing a train right off the tracks. Cracks opened up parallel to the Ashley River, with part of the riverbank falling into the water. Thousands of chimneys all over the state either fell or were rendered useless. A Charleston minister at his summer home in Asheville, North Carolina, described a noise like the sound of wheels driving straight up the mountain, followed by the sound of many railroad cars going by. A moment later, one corner of his house lifted off the ground and slammed back down again. The quake brought a series of “sand blows,” a particularly disturbing phenomenon whereby craters open up and spew sand and water up into the air like a small volcano. In Charleston’s case, some of the craters were 20 feet wide, shooting debris another 20 feet into the air. The whole event lasted less than a minute.
In crowded Charleston, the damage was horrific: over 2,000 buildings destroyed, a quarter of the city’s value gone, 27 killed immediately and almost 100 more to die from injuries and disease. Because of the large numbers of newly homeless, tent cities sprang up in every available park and green space. The American Red Cross’s first field mission soon brought some relief, but the scarcity of food, and especially fresh water, made life difficult for everyone.
Almost every surviving building had experienced structural damage, in some cases severe, so a way had to be found to stabilize them. This led to the widespread use of the “earthquake bolt” now seen throughout older Charleston homes. Essentially acting as a very long screw with a washer on each end, the idea of the earthquake bolt is simple: Poke a long iron rod through two walls that need stabilizing, and cap the ends. Charleston being Charleston, of course, the end caps were often decorated with a pattern or symbol.
The seismic activity of Charleston’s earthquake was so intense that more than 300 aftershocks occurred in the 35 years after the event. In fact, geologists think that most seismic events measured in the region today—including a large event in December 2008, also centered near Summerville—are probably also aftershocks.
The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon
The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon (122 E. Bay St., 843/727-2165, www.oldexchange.com, daily 9am-5pm, $10 adults, $5 children and students) at the intersection of East Bay and Meeting Streets is absolutely brimming with history. The last building erected by the British before the American Revolution, it’s also one of the three most historically significant colonial buildings in the United States, along with Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and Boston’s Faneuil Hall.
the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon
This is actually the former Royal Exchange and Custom House, the cellar of which served as a British prison. The complex was built in 1771 over a portion of the original 1698 seawall, a portion of which you can see today during the short but fascinating tour of the “dungeon” (actually built as a warehouse). Three of Charleston’s four signers of the Declaration of Independence did time downstairs for sedition against the crown. Later, happier times were experienced in the ballroom upstairs, as it was here that the state selected its delegates to the Continental Congress and ratified the U.S. Constitution; it’s also where George Washington took a spin on the dance floor during his raucous “Farewell Tour” in 1791. While the highlight for most is the basement dungeon, or provost, where the infamous “gentleman pirate” Stede Bonnet was imprisoned in 1718 before being hanged, visitors shouldn’t miss the sunny upstairs ballroom and its selection of Washington-oriented history.
Waterfront Park
Dubbing it “this generation’s gift to the future,” Mayor Joe Riley made this eight-acre project another part of his downtown renovation. Situated on Concord Street roughly between Exchange Street and Vendue Range, Waterfront Park (843/724-7327, daily dawn-dusk, free) was, like many waterfront locales in Charleston, built on what used to be marsh and water. This particularly massive chunk of “made land” juts about a football field’s length farther out than the old waterline. Visitors and locals alike enjoy the relaxing vista of Charleston Harbor, often from the many swinging benches arranged in an unusual front-to-back, single-file pattern all down the pier. On the end you can find viewing binoculars to see the various sights out on the Cooper River, chief among them the USS Yorktown at Patriots Point and the big bridge to Mount Pleasant. Children will enjoy the large “Vendue” wading fountain at the park’s entrance off Vendue Range, while a bit farther south is the large and quite artful Pineapple Fountain with its surrounding wading pool. Contemporary art lovers of all ages will appreciate the nearby Waterfront Park City Gallery (34 Prioleau St., 843/958-6484, www.citygalleryatwaterfrontpark.com, Mon.-Fri. noon-5pm, free).
Waterfront Park
South Carolina Aquarium
Honestly, if you’ve been to the more expansive aquariums in Monterey or Boston, you might be disappointed at the breadth of offerings at the South Carolina Aquarium (100 Aquarium Wharf, 843/720-1990, www.scaquarium.org, Mar.-Aug. daily 9am-5pm, Sept.-Feb. daily 9am-4pm, $24.95 adults, $17.95 children, 4D film extra, combo tickets with Fort Sumter tour available). But nonetheless, it’s clean and well done and is a great place for the whole family to have some fun while getting educated about the rich aquatic life off the coast and throughout this small but ecologically diverse state.
When you enter you’re greeted with the 15,000-gallon Carolina Seas tank, with placid nurse sharks and vicious-looking moray eels. Other exhibits highlight the five key South Carolina ecosystems: beach, salt marsh, coastal plain, piedmont, and mountain forest. Another neat display is the Touch Tank, a hands-on collection of invertebrates found along the coast, such as sea urchins and horseshoe crabs. The pièce de résistance, however, is certainly the three-story Great Ocean Tank with its hundreds of deeper-water marine creatures, including sharks, puffer fish, and sea turtles. Speaking of sea turtles: A key part of the aquarium’s research and outreach efforts is the Turtle Hospital, which attempts to rehabilitate and save sick and injured specimens. The hospital has so far saved 20 sea turtles, the first one being a 270-pound female affectionately known as “Edisto Mama.”
S Fort Sumter
This is it: the place that brought about the beginning of the Civil War, a Troy for modern times. Though many historians insist the war would have happened regardless of President Lincoln’s decision to keep Fort Sumter (843/883-3123, www.nps.gov/fosu, hours seasonal, free) in federal hands, nonetheless the stated casus belli was Major Robert Anderson’s refusal to surrender the fort when requested to do so in the early morning hours of April 12, 1861. A few hours later came the first shot of the war, fired from Fort Johnson by Confederate captain George James. That 10-inch mortar shell, a signal for the general bombardment to begin, exploded above Fort Sumter, and nothing in Charleston, or the South, or the United States, would ever be the same again. Notorious secessionist Edmund Ruffin gets credit for firing the first shot in anger, only moments after James’s signal shell, from a battery at Cummings Point. Ruffin’s 64-pound projectile scored a direct hit, smashing into the fort’s southwest corner. The first return shot from Fort Sumter was fired by none other than Captain Abner Doubleday, the man once credited as the father of baseball. The first death of the Civil War also happened at Fort Sumter—not during the Confederate bombardment, but on the day after. U.S. Army private Daniel Hough died when the cannon he was loading, to be fired as part of a 100-gun surrender salute to the Stars and Stripes, exploded prematurely. Today the battered but still-standing Fort Sumter remains astride the entrance to Charleston Harbor on an artificial 70,000-ton sandbar. Sumter was part of the so-called Third System of fortifications ordered after the War of 1812. Interestingly, the fort was still not quite finished when the Confederate guns opened up on it 50 years later, and it never enjoyed its intended full complement of 135 big guns.
Mary Chesnut’s Diary
I have always kept a journal after a fashion of my own, with dates and a line of poetry or prose, mere quotations, which I understood and no one else, and I have kept letters and
extracts from the papers. From today forward I will tell the story in my own way.
Mary Boykin Chesnut
She was born in the middle of the state, but Mary Boykin Chesnut’s seminal Civil War diary—originally titled A Diary From Dixie and first published in 1905—provides one of the most extraordinary eyewitness accounts of antebellum life in Charleston you’ll ever read. By turns wise and witty, fiery and flirtatious, Chesnut’s writing is a gripping, politically savvy, and dryly humorous chronicle of a life lived close to the innermost circles of Confederate decision-makers. Her husband, James Chesnut Jr., was a U.S. senator until South Carolina seceded from the Union, whereupon he became a key aide to Confederate president Jefferson Davis and a general in the Confederate Army.
The diary runs from February 1861—two months before the firing on Fort Sumter, which she witnessed—to August 1865, after the Confederate surrender. Along the way the diary shifts to and from various locales, including Montgomery, Alabama; Richmond, Virginia; Columbia, South Carolina; and, of course, Charleston. A sample excerpt is typical of her high regard for the Holy City: