Architecture | Charleston Walking Tours by Michael Trouche - Part 3Charleston Walking Tours by Michael Trouche

Picturesque Piazzas

Many of the historic houses in #Charleston are graced with full-length side porches known by the Italian name piazza. The meaning and the pronunciation are different in Charleston however. We say “pee AH zuh”, while the Italians pronounce it “pee AHTSA”. It literally is translated as “square” referring to the open inner courtyards of public buildings in historic Italy that were bordered by covered breezeways, creating what the Italians called a “salotto a cielo aperto” or “open air living room”. Not lost in translation is the purpose of the covered area, which was to shade and cool the breezes that swept through them and into windows. This became an effective method for enduring the heat of Charleston in the days before electricity, and on most streets in the historic areas of the city, the piazza is still as notable feature.<img.src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”The Piazza”

Fearsome Fortress

The imposing District Jail looms over Magazine Street in downtown #Charleston with its fortress-like crenelations that make for a very forbidding facade. The jail first opened in 1802 as a much smaller structure, and was extensively remodeled in the 1850’s to stand four stories high as a stark example of punishments that was harsh in those days, and made to look like an imposing castle. It was severely damaged by the 1886 earthquake, and restored at the current height of three stories. Among the famous and infamous held here were murderer Lavinia Fisher, hanged in 1822 and who supposedly still haunts the jail today; Denmark Vesey, whose attempted slave uprising also earned him a place on the gallows; as well as hundreds of Federal soldiers, some brought up from Andersonville prison when Sherman marched through Georgia, who were briefly kept here as captives during the Civil War. The building was never used as a city jail, which is commonly told to visitors, but as a district and then county jail, and closed in 1939. <img.src=”Charleston Landmarks” alt=”Old District Jail”

Riverside Reminder

The circa 1800 Gaillard-Bennett House on Montagu Street is several blocks from the Ashley River today, but when it was built, it faced the water. The #Charleston peninsula was much different then, and on its western edge grand houses were built by prominent citizens to take advantage of the prevailing breezes that came over the Ashley. This Adam-style house built by Theodore Gaillard was designed with extensive side porches and windows to take in the cooling breezes, and it stands on a considerable lot that stretches back nearly one block. Filling of Ashley River marshes in the 1880’s left the grand old house high and dry, but it still retains its classic elegance, if not its breezy nature. <img.src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”Gaillard-Bennett House ”

Scot Spot

The First Scots Presbyterian Church on Meeting Street in historic #Charleston is among the oldest in the city, completed in 1814. The church replaced the original Scottish “Kirk” built on this site in 1731, which was too small for the expanding congregation by the 19th century. The builders were also Scots, John and James Gordon, who in the frugal Scottish tradition, saved the cost of a steeple with a pair of domed towers, The concept had come from another pair Scots, Robert and James Adam, whose Adam style swept America in the early 1800’s. One tower had a bell that was donated to the Confederacy and melted down for cannon, and the church went without chimes until the current bell was installed in 1999. We go past the First Scot church on my walking tours, and often hear organ or bagpipe music. <img.src=”Charleston Landmarks” alt=”First Scots Presbyterian Church”

Washington’s Warriors

The Washington Light Infantry Monument in #Charleston #SC is and obelisk very reminiscent of, in a smaller scale, the Washington monument. The irony is not only that they are both named in honor of George Washington, but that the Washington Monument was designed by Charleston-born Robert Mills, the same architect who designed the building in background of this picture, the Fireproof Building. The obelisk stands in Washington Square, erected in 1892 in honor of the Washington Light Infantry, a volunteer military organization created in 1807. Soldiers of the WLI have served in every American conflict from the War of 1812 until World War II. <img.src=”Charleston Landmarks” alt=”Washington Light Infantry Monument ”

Factually Fictional

This idyllic image of the grand Regency-style mansion on Rutledge Avenue in #CharlestonSC seems to come from some dream of the past when it was owned by the man many believe Margaret Mitchell fashioned her character of Rhett Butler in “Gone With The Wind”. The house built for Patrick Duncan in 1816, was bought in 1845 by Charleston banker George Alfred Trenholm. Trenholm was everything the novel and movie portrayed in Butler, who was said to be from Charleston – dashing ladies’ man, expert with dueling pistols, and financer of blockade-running ships that brought in supplies during the #Civil War. Ironically, the house of the ladies’ man has been home since 1909 to Ashley Hall School – a girls school. My mother taught school at Ashley Hall for many years. <img.src=”Charleston Landmarks” alt=”Ashley Hall”

Eventual Edifice

The first Catholic cathedral in the South was begun in #Charleston in 1850, with a brownstone, Gothic Revival design by Irish-born architect Patrick Keely of Brooklyn, New York. The church was finished an consecrated in 1854 as the Cathedral of St. John an St. Finbar, but was destroyed seven years later in a great fire that swept the city in 1861. Keely was called on again to design a replacement structure on the same site, but it was nearly 30 years later. Charleston’s fortunes were decimated by the Civil War, the the Catholic diocese had barely enough money to build at all, and the replacement church, named the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist was constructed piece-meal over 17 years and after Keely’s death in 1896. Consecrated in 1907, the cathedral opened unfinished, lacking a steeple that cost too much, and for more than a century, it was a flat-topped structure until the current steeple was finally completed in 2010. We go past the church on my tour on most days, and I point out that my parents were married in the structure. <img.src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”Cathedral of St. John the Baptist”

Distinctive Doors

At the corner of Broad and East Bay streets in #Charleston #SC, the details of the scenic 1853 building are exquisite and eye-catching. The building was created as a bank by the same man that many believe Margaret Mitchell fashioned her character of Rhett Butler in “Gone With The Wind”, whose real name was George Alfred Trenholm. Trenholm’s building was in use as a bank well into the 21st century, when it was at last converted into a restaurant and condominiums. But the classic details still adorn the old bank and provide a glimpse of what customers saw when entering more than 150 years ago. <img.src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”Number One Broad Street”

Fortunate Faber

The 1836 Palladian villa built by Henry Faber on East Bay Street in #historic #Charleston was one of several grand mansions built in the heyday of the city’s antebellum fortunes and classic architecture. The line of elegant buildings faced the Cooper River from a section of rising land known as Hampstead Hill. The higher elevation and the proximity to the river gave owners a spectacular view and cooling breezes. One of the first railroads built in the city ran down the waterfront in front of the houses, making them in the line of fire during the #Civil War, and the area were largely abandoned by owners who fled the conflict. After the war, the area was mostly inhabited by former slaves, or freedmen, and by the early 20th century, the Faber House had been transformed into one of the few black-owned hotels in Charleston, the Hamitic Hotel. After the depression, the hotel closed and many of the former houses were razed for housing projects. A flurry of preservationism saved the Faber House in 1948, and today it has been beautifully restored as a combination of residential and office spaces. <img.src=”Charleston Historic Sites” alt=”Faber House”

Misplaced Markers

Many of the #historic grave stones in the burial ground of the First Baptist Church in #CharlestonSC are leaning up against the north wall of the property – and there’s an interesting reason why. The lot was purchased in 1696 by a group that moved to the city from Kittery, Maine. At that time, Maine was part of the Massachusetts colony, and the group from Kittery were being persecuted by the Massachusetts Puritans for religious beliefs that ran counter to those accepted in the colony. The people in the group called themselves Antipedobaptists, believing that infants did not have the capability to choose to be baptized and that baptism into Christianity had to be a conscious adult choice. The Puritans reacted harshly, so the group moved to Carolina, as the colony was then called, which offered freedom from persecution for all beliefs at part of its colonial constitution. The group built a small wooden meeting house on a lot they bought on #Church Street, which was surrounded by a small graveyard. As the years progressed, the group changed its name to Anabaptists and then Baptists, and grew in numbers. Eventually the old structure was replaced with a church in the 1740’s, and the current church on the site added in 1822. Because the newer building required a much larger footprint on the small lot, the church was built on old grave sites, and the stones moved to the wall to remember this buried beneath. <img.src=”Charleston Historic Sites” alt=”First Baptist Church”