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

Junior Giant

Many years before it emerges from the sea as a hulking 300-pound creature, the loggerhead sea turtle begins its odyssey as a tiny hatchling barely larger than a person’s finger. The Cape Romain Wildlife Refuge near #Charleston, SC, is one of America’s largest nesting and hatching grounds for this amazing creature, which comes ashore on Summer nights in dark, remote beach areas to dig nests and deposit clutches of about 60 ping-pong sized eggs . The loggerhead is an air-breathing reptile that lives its life in the sea, but must drag its massive carapace and land-clumsy flippers on to remote beaches to lay its eggs in the sand, where they hatch about six weeks later and dash into the waves to renew the cycle. Because Cape Romain is the longest stretch of unspoiled coast line in the Atlantic U.S., thousands of loggerheads lay eggs here each Summer and this is crucial to keeping the species alive in the South Atlantic. <img.src=”South Carolina Wildlife” alt=”Loggerhead Sea Turtle”

Legendary Libation

The propensity for alcohol consumption in historic #Charleston has always been well known. In the colonial period, there was so much drinking at various “tippling houses”, that the city passed an ordinance in the 1730’s prohibiting such taverns from serving sailors the day prior to embarking from the seaport. And the heavy indulgence of Charlestonians long ago earned the city the nickname “The Madeira City”. Temperance movements became particularly strong in the 19th century, and in 1893, the state of South Carolina passed the Dispensary Act, which prohibited sale of “alcoholic merchandise” from any source other than state-approved dispensary shops. The state got in the business of making the alcohol served as well, and it was sold in bottles with a uniform symbol of the palmetto tree with crossed palmetto logs. The Dispensary Act created such a spate of boot-legging in Charleston that it was finally repealed in 1907. Today, a distiller has used the Dispensary’s original 1898 bourbon recipe to recreated a concoction that is being sold with the old Dispensary logo. Hopefully it will not lead to any prohibition.<img.src=”Charleston Curiosities” alt=”South Carolina Dispensary”

Bridge Beginnings

The William Gibbes House on South Battery Street in historic #Charleston, is today a fashionable residence two rows removed from the Ashley River. When it was built just prior to the American Revolution, however, the lot overlooked the water in what was then called South Bay. The namesake William Gibbes was a very successful Charleston entrepreneur who bought the lot as a ship landing for various enterprises that included the export of timber. Because the muddy, shallow bay afforded no natural slip for ocean-sailing ships, Gibbes built a “bridge”, as the early wharves were called. This was done by floating stones and debris on palmetto log rafts to deeper water, sinking them at low tide, and building or bridging wth more fill in between to create a protruding wharf, and the Gibbes built on South Bay was called “Gibbes Bridge”. The old wharf washed away long before the Civil War, and in the early 20th century, the South Bay area was filled by dredging up river bottom and creating what is now Murray Boulevard. But the bridge connection did not die with Gibbes, as a later owner of the house was Cornelia Farrow Roebling, widow of Washington Roebling, chief engineer and designer of the Brooklyn Bridge. <img.src=”Charleston Landmarks” alt=”William Gibbes House ”

High Hydration

The Middleton-Pinckney House, built in an elegant Adamasque fashion in #Charleston during the 1790’s, became a most unusual public facility in 1879, when it was made into the Charleston Waterworks. The city’s first successful artesian well was dug in 1879, tapping into massive subterranean aquifers whose positive pressure from centuries of water trickling downward, established a non-stop gushing flow upward that poured in millions of gallons each day. The old house was equipped with pumping mechanisms and just outside, a huge reservoir that would also serve the city in an unexpected capacity in 1933 by being diverted into the municipal swimming pool until 1963. <img.src=”Charleston Curiosities” alt=”Middleton-Pinckney House”

Ear-ie Evolution

The massive tracker organ in St. Michael’s Anglican Church is one of the oldest, in part, and most changed ,in fact, here in historic #Charleston. The original organ, created by in 1767 by Swiss organ-builder John Snetzler, featured 21 stops and 900 pipes. The organ deteriorated in Charleston’s humid climate, and in 1834 the Henry Erben Company of new York rebuilt and refitted the organ with new word chest and pedals, and was called on again for more repairs in 1859. The organ was removed from the church during the bombardment of the Civil War and stored at St. Paul’s Church in Radcliffeborough. After image from the move and the war, English immigrant John Baker overhauled the the organ in 1871. More repairs came in 1910, as the Austin Organ Company of Connecticut refurbished and added to the mahogany case and in 1940, the manual bellows were replaced with electric motors. The last changes came in Ireland where the organ was reconstructed using parts of the original 1767 case, and today’s version has 40 stops and 2519 pipes. On most tours, I take the group into St. Michael’s for a first-hand look at the old organ.<img.src=”Charleston Curiosities” alt=”Snetzler Organ”

Fashionable Firefighters

This image of the various fire brigades gathered near City Hall on Meeting Street in historic #Charleston dates from between 1838, when the 182-foot steeple of the Circular Congregational Church in the background was finished, and 1861, when that same steeple and most of the buildings in the background were destroyed by the great fire of 1861. There were nearly two dozen of these volunteer fire brigades at that time, all of whom had their various uniforms and insignias. They were considered to be very dashing in their grand sartorial display, but they apparently looked better than they performed in fighting fires. To their credit, there was no pressurized water or underground water source available until the 1880’s who the fire brigade system was scrapped and the Charleston Fire Department created. Occasionally, I take the walking tour inside City Hall chambers to see this and other famous paintings. <img.src=”Charleston Curiosities” alt=”Fire Brigades”

Free Our Flag

This is the original state flag of #South Carolina, which was created in 1861 after South Carolina seceded from the Union, and flew over the state capitol in Columbia. The crescent was clearly not intended to depict the moon, but the crescent-shaped gorgets of the South Carolina militia, and along with the palmetto tree were symbols of our state’s independence, as both the militia and the palmetto logs were crucial to our Revolutionary War victory over the British in #Charleston in 1776. When Sherman’s armies ravaged the state in 1865, a unit from Iowa took our flag from the capitol as a war trophy. It is now in the possession if the Historic Society of Iowa in Des Moines. Because we are not a conquered enemy, and because the intention of the Northern armies was supposedly to “preserve the Union”, there is no reason why this banner stays a trophy of war. We would like it back. <img.src=”South Carolina History” alt=”The Palmetto Flag”

Suave Side-hall

The side-hall single house design is fairly common in historic #Charleston, such as this 1850’s Italianate structure on Legare Street. The floor plan was a departure from the older single-house design, which featured a house with a single room width facing the street, bisected with a middle hall parallel to the street that separated rooms front and back on each floor. The problem with this kind of house is that the rooms are small and compartmentalized, which was not suit able for fancy entertaining by the 1820’s, when Charleston had become a very sociable city. The side-hall design took the hallway out of the middle of the house and put it on the side, perpendicular to the street, so that interior rooms would be interconnected by large archways, making the main floor potentially one big ballroom from the from of the house to the back. I often take my tour past our former residence on Legare Street and tell stories of what it was like growing up there. <img.src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”Side-hall single house”

Tiffany Tradition

There are a number of stained-glass windows in historic #Charleston that were created by the famous Tiffany Glass Company of New York. Louis Comfort Tiffany made his fame by revolutionizing the images made in opalescent glass, using such techniques as copper-foil soldered rims, fracturing glass to create creative detail, and even adding chemicals such as arsenic into the molten glass to enhance color. This window pictured is The Anunciation, which was done circa 1898, and shows similar iridescent features to the the famous lamps he started making about that time. <img.src=”Charleston Architecture ” alt=”Tiffany Windows”

Citadel Sentinel

The South Carolina Military Academy established in #Charlesotn in 1842 is know as The Citadel, and the current campus created in 1922 along the Ashley River is dominated by the fortress-like facades that give it the distinctive name. Citadel cadets have gone on to serve in both the Confederate and United States armies, as well the U.S. Navy, the Marine Corps and the Air Force. With an annual enrollment of less than 2500 cadets, The Citadel nevertheless has a remarkable service record in United States military history, and unlike West Point and Annapolis, Citadel graduates are not automatically given a commission when graduating, and only serve voluntarily by enlisting or joining an ROTC unit. The cadets have never wavered in their sense of patriotic duty, and in World War II, The Citadel had the highest percentage of graduates in military service of any American college other than the service academies. <img.src=”Charleston Landmarks” alt=”The Citadel”