This old picture along Broad Street is a section of the city that we walk on my tour, and many of the buildings in the photo are still there. Visitors enjoy having intricate historic details pointed out in Charleston’s famous architecture. Notice the eagle in the triangular pediment of the corner building. It was built as a United States Bank in 1817, and the eagle, carved from oak and gilded with gold leaf, was the symbol of the bank. That building is still a bank today, and the eagle is still there. Sadly though, the building with the attractive portico on the other corner was razed in 1910 to make way for Charleston’s first skyscraper, the 8-story, 121-foot People’s Bank Building, an eyesore along the historic street still today. What is also interesting is, from the look of this 1865 picture, it seems that the surface of Broad Street is dirt. Yet, in fact, just breath the soil surface were rows of cobblestones, which in the old days were pounded down into the soil for drainage, and often did not seem to be there in images. <img.src=”Charleston Streets” alt=”Historic View of Broad Street”
