History | Charleston Walking Tours by Michael Trouche - Part 4Charleston Walking Tours by Michael Trouche

Hardly Historic

With statuesque oak trees, exquisite wrought iron gates and grand houses overlooking the Ashley River, Murray Boulevard at first glance seems to be one of the most historic areas in #Charleston, yet nothing was here at all prior to 1911. The southern tip of Charleston’s peninsula was once no more than sand flats and mud banks, and the closest anyone built with houses the still stand today was on what would become South Battery Street, a full block inland. But filling of the area began in earnest when Charleston philanthropist Andrew Buist Murray donated part of his considerable fortune in a project that would take more than a decade to complete, as acres of river bottom were dredged to build the promenade that now bears his name. The first house was built on Murray Boulevard in 1913. <img.src=”Charleston Landmarks” alt=”Murray Boulevard”

High Half

Wandering around the parts of #Charleston where the buildings are older, visitors will often see houses with half-gable rooftops. Some of these are row house, but some are free-standing, and in each case, the gable lowers toward the side of the property where there is some open ground, and never lowers toward the ground of another separate property. These are all houses built long before Charleston’s first tapped water became a reality in 1879, when the first artesian well was successfully drilled. Prior to that, the cleanest water came from above in the form of rainfall, and any method of catching, collecting or storing it was considered a good idea. Some could be diverted through gutters and pipes to metal attic vats, but much of it cascaded off the roofs into the ground below, so many Charleston gardens featured masonry cisterns to catch the flow, and run-off was good for plants that may have included citrus fruits and herbs. The half gable, therefore, became a good way to divert all the water that struck the roof back into the owner’s property. This particular building can be seen from Ropemaker’s Lane, where we often go on the tour. <img.src=”Charleston Curiosities” alt=”Half Gable Roofs”

Opulently Original

The 1818-era Aiken Rhett House is on of six museum houses in #Charleston, but is unique in way that separates it from the others. The grand 19th century home of Governor William Aiken is preserved, not restored, and it looks much the same as it did when Confederate President Jefferson Davis attended a reception in its grand ballroom during the Civil War. The house is an Italian Villa design with later Greek Revival entrance, and also has a fully intact area in the rear garden with slave quarters and carriage house. It is not air-conditioned, so it can be stifling in Charleston’s Summer heat, but still a magnificent structure that literally takes you back in time. <img.src=”Charleston Landmarks” alt=”Aiken-Rhett House”

Fawning Friends

The deer population has exploded in coastal #South Carolina, so the annual deer hunting season that begins in mid-August is largely sanctioned by the state Department of Natural Resources to cull the herds so that they do not over-populate to the point of starvation. Still, I would hope there is a better way, and any close encounter for me would make it difficult to do any harm to such a delicate creature. <img.src=”South Carolina Wildlife” alt=”Deer Hunting Season”

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”

Singularly Simmons

Learning the iron trade as a teenaged apprentice in a blacksmith’s shop around the turn of the century, the acclaimed Charleston ironsmith Philip Simmons became a household name in #Charleston during a career that spanned nearly a century. Mr. Simmons started out hammering wagon wheels and other working iron parts as an apprentice iron worker at only 13 years old, but quickly fell in love with the historic wrought iron craftsmanship he saw in the streets of Charleston. Fashioning his first decorative gate in the 1930’s, a gate that we pass by daily on my walking tours. Mr. Simmons showed a keen understanding of the possibilities of shaping iron, and became one of the most sought-after artisans in Charleston history. This gate pictured is the essence of Philip Simmons – a delicate beauty that incorporated both the nature scenes he liked to depict with the image of the heron, as well as personalizing it by adding a crucifix for the owner of the house, an ordained minister. We sometimes wander St. Michael’s alley on the tour, going past the Simmons gate. <img.src=”Charleston Ironwork” alt=”Philip Simmons Gate”

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”