Charleston, SC
65 Degrees - Clear and Windy
Charleston is the Holy City. Not due to the number of churches or the strength of their congregations, but because their spires dominate the city skyline. Charleston led the nation in historic preservation through land use regulation. Historically significant structures have been protected for many decades, and new construction must now meet stringent height, massing, and design standards. Nothing is allowed to challenge the Holy City's spires for supremacy.
Charleston is a City of History. It was founded in 1670, originally called Charles Towne, in homage to King Charles II. It has been a leading city of the South since colonial times. Charlestonians had prominent roles in the American Revolution and the formation of the nation, as signatories to the Declaration of Independence, delegates to, and leaders of, the Continental Congress, and signatories to the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. In the next century, Charleston was the "Cradle of Secession." South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, and the first battle of the Civil War was fought in Charleston Harbor.
Charleston is a Chilly City. At least today, it is. Damn, it's cold. We brought jeans and jackets, but didn't expect to use them. Charleston is so hot and so humid for so much of the year, that winter is the social season. Plantation owners would spend the winter in their city houses plying the party circuit. First frost is sometime in December and the heat starts to build again before the end of March. Frost came early this year, and the wind blowing off the water today gets your attention.
The heart of the Charleston tourist experience is the Old City Market. This is the Pike Place of Charleston, older, but not in continuous use. It was built on top of a reclaimed creek bed beginning in 1804. The iconic handicraft of the market is the sweetgrass basket, woven by hand for generations in the African tradition. They are authentic and intricate, functional and beautiful, too expensive to buy, and too big to carry home.
The market is the home base of Palmetto Carriage Works, the oldest tour operator in the city, and one of several to offer the classic Charleston experience, a mule-drawn carriage tour. This industry in Charleston is highly regulated, for the benefit of the mules, the city, its visitors, and its citizens. These animals are not ridden hard and put away wet. The mules are rotated in and out of service within the city stables, and regularly pastured on farms outside the city. There is a fulltime veterinarian with offices on stable row to constantly monitor their health. When maximum levels of heat and humidity are approached, the temperature of each mule is taken every hour. When limits are exceeded, operations are ceased until conditions improve. Every tour has to check in with the city office immediately after embarking. The driver, carriage, and mule team are registered and the city assigns the tour one of several authorized routes, picked at random. Only twenty tours can operate at any given time. The mules wear diaper bags. When a blowout occurs, the driver stops and drops a marker, then notifies the city cleanup crew. A truck is dispatched to the site of the spill, vacuums up any remaining solid and liquid waste, disinfects the site, and washes the residue away. Now there's a job that sucks shit. Literally.
Armed with an intimate knowledge of the ins and outs of carriage tours, we embarked on one of our own. Driver Malcom, and mule team Carter & Cash, took us for a breezy tour around the historic district. Our assigned route didn't have a lot of highlights, but the narrative was entertaining and informative, covering history, culture, and architecture.
The carriage tour was a nice ride, but not really much of a tour, so we took off on a walk-about of the historic district. From the hotel, we walked up to Meeting Street, followed Meeting all the way South of Broad down to the Battery, then back up East Bay Street to North of Broad.
The most visible, among the most lovely, but not one of the oldest steeples in the Holy City is that of St. Philips Episcopal Church. It is the oldest Anglican congregation south of Virginia, but the house of worship itself dates only to the 1830s, its predecessors having suffered catastrophic disasters, both natural and manmade.
The Old Powder Magazine is the oldest public building in the Carolinas, built in 1713 as the city's store of gunpowder. It figured prominently in the Revolution, designed to implode rather than explode in an attack, but it has held firm for 300 years.
The Circular Congregational Church is known as the "Church of Dissenters" for its "polyglot mix of non-Anglicans." In the Holy City, the almost medieval design of the 1891 building is noted for the absence of a spire. This congregation first congregated on the site of the "White Meeting House," for which Meeting Street is named.
The intersection of Broad and Meeting is a key navigational landmark within the historic district, but it also serves a higher calling. The intersection of Broad and Meeting is the Four Corners of Law:
- Municipal Law - Charleston City Hall - 1804
- State Law - Charleston County Courthouse - 1792
- Federal Law - The United States Post Office and Federal Courthouse - 1896
- God's Law - St. Michael's Episcopal Church - 1761
Some of Charleston's most significant Antebellum homes have been preserved as house museums and are open to the public. The Nathaniel Russell House at 51 Meeting Street is a National Historic Landmark built in 1808. The first two floors have been meticulously restored by the Historic Charleston Foundation, and furnished almost exclusively with period pieces. The home is considered "one of the country's best examples of neoclassicism," and is known for its three story "flying staircase" that requires no external means of support. Each step is supported solely by the step below it. The staircase has now been reinforced and the public is no longer allowed to use it. The third floor has been extensively damaged, and repaired, by a series of storms and has not been restored in anticipation of inevitable storm damage in the future.
The downtown Charleston peninsula runs from North to South, with its southern tip at the confluence of the Ashley River on the West side and the Cooper River to the East. White Point Gardens is at the foot of the peninsula with views out over the mouths of the rivers that combine to form Charleston Harbor.
The Battery is the seawall that defines the southern tip of the peninsula and holds back the waters of the Ashley and Cooper rivers, Charleston Harbor, and the surges of countless storms. It was built in the 1850s after the peninsula was expanded southward with fill to reach its current dimensions. The low battery runs to the West along the banks of the Ashley, the high battery rises above East Bay Street along the shores of the Cooper. The top of the Battery is paved with granite and is popular with locals and tourists out for a stroll, a jog, or a run.
The Edmondston-Alston House at 21 East Bay Street is another of Charleston's great antebellum homes. Charles Edmondston had the house built in 1825, overlooking Charleston Harbor and the comings and goings of his merchant ships. Edmonston made and lost several fortunes, and was forced to sell the home in 1838 to Charles Alston, a rice planter. The home has remained in the Alston family for most of the last 175 years, and more than 90% of the furnishings and artifacts on display in the home, many of which are historically significant, are original to the first Alston era in the mid-1800s. The first two floors of the home have been restored and maintained as they were in the 19th century, while the third floor has been remodeled into a modern apartment and is home to a descendent of the Alston family. Each wall of the home, both exterior and interior, is two bricks thick. Almost all of the windows in the home are original, protected by metal shutters on both sides. The home has survived fires, storms, and Union shelling during the Civil War. The garden wall was the original southern city wall before the peninsula was expanded. It dates back to the Revolution.
Charleston Mayor Joe Riley dedicated Waterfront Park as "this generation's gift to the future." The twelve acre park along a half-mile stretch of the Cooper River was more than a decade in the planning, and more than halfway through construction, when Hurricane Hugo caused extensive damage in 1989. The damage was repaired and construction continued, the park opening just one week behind schedule in 1990. The crowning jewel of the park is Pineapple Fountain, a work of art dedicated to the art of play.
Charleston was the epicenter of the slave trade in the Old South. Some estimate that fully one-half of all African Americans alive today can trace their ancestry to Sullivan's Island in Charleston Harbor, where 80% of slaves imported from Africa were processed. It was the Ellis Island of slavery. The united States banned the importation of slaves in 1808, killing the international slave trade, but dramatically increasing domestic slave trading. Public auctions of slaves flourished in the first half of the nineteenth century. Public slave auctions were creating quite the spectacle in Charleston, offending sensitive sensibilities and especially European travelers from countries that had banned slavery long ago. The City of Charleston banned public slave auctions in the 1850s, giving rise to slave marts, where private auctions were held indoors. The auction district in Charleston was eventually home to more than 40 slave marts, the most prominent of which, Ryan's Mart, was owned and operated by a city alderman. Ryan's Mart opened in 1859, holding, abusing, and trading slaves until auctions were suspended in 1863 during the Civil War. The City of Charleston acquired the site of Ryan's Mart and opened the Old Slave Mart Museum in 2007.
Just today, as we registered to tour the Edmondston-Alston House, the lovely lady behind the desk said, "Slavery wasn't all bad, you know." It was the old southern apologist line about benevolent masters and grateful slaves. As if the fact that not every slave was overworked and underfed, badgered and belittled, delegitimized and dehumanized, shackled and chained, beaten and raped, tortured and killed, excuses robbing someone of the fruits of their labor, their self-determination, their free will. Ignorance is not an excuse. Benevolence is not an excuse. Slavery was all bad, and to suggest otherwise is ignorant and not at all benevolent.
One more look at St. Philip’s spire, awash in the glow of sunset, as we finish our travels for the day.
Looking to go downscale for dinner tonight, still sustainable farm-to-table, old-school, but New Southern, the Moon Handbook gave us the ultimate locals only tip. A diner with serious food, just across the river and beyond the "famed Coburg Dairy cow." A place with a Tuesday Night special so special you reserve the order, not the table. And it just happens to be Tuesday night.
"Welcome to the Glass Onion. We strongly believe in the importance of eating seasonally, locally and naturally. So, you can expect all natural meats, local seafood and vegetables from as close to home as we can get. Whether you are looking for a light lunch, a decadent brunch or dinner paired with your favorite libation – we will satisfy. The fried chicken at Glass Onion is so good that you need to make a reservation to enjoy it. The restaurant's Fried Chicken Supper Night is 4-9 p.m. every Tuesday. Reservations have to be made at least 24 hours in advance."
Satisfy they did. When the words "Smoked Honey" are on a drink menu, don't ask, just order. Best whiskey sour ever. We have had pimento cheese three days running, this one of a finer texture with a harder kick, paired with fork-tender sausage and pickled veg, all made in-house. The place was packed, every place set with chicken, fresh and local, brined and seasoned, flour-dusted, mahogany fried. The salty crunchy bits stood on their own, but the inner layer of flesh, pulled from the bone in tender strands, benefited from a dredge through a schmear of hot sauce and a dip in the house buttermilk dressing served on the side. The collards, hands down the Prince of Sides, came from a deep dark place in the soul, full of smoke with just the slight twang of vinegar. Killer.
Glass Onion Menu:
- Smoked Honey Whiskey Sour
Bulleit Bourbon & Bittermilk Magic! - Belle's Sausage Link with Pimento Cheese, Garlic Toast, and Our Pickles
- Tuesday Night Fried Chicken
White, Dark, and Wings with Mash and Collards, Cole Slaw, Macaroni Salad - Peach Almond Pound Cake with Buttercream
Tomorrow: Charleston Before and After
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