The #Charleston, SC Fire Department was not created until 1881, and fire fighting in the city prior to that was done by individual private fire companies, called “fire brigades” who were located in small buildings around the town, such as this location pictured on Hayne Street. From the 1850’s to the early 1900’s, most fire engines were little more than water pumps on wheels pulled by horses, that used the pressure of steam boilers to create both vacuum and positive pressure to force water out of wells and hydrants on to burning buildings. A few of the old boilers still exist and are on display at the Main Fire Station at 262 Meeting Street.<img src=”fire engines” alt=”Charleston Fires”>
Category: History
History
Confederate Home and College
The Confederate Home and College was created in 1867 by Amarinthia and Isabella Snowden as a home for widows, mothers and daughters of Confederate soldiers killed during the Civil War, and as a college for women, who had little advanced educational opportunities in that era. The building is a circa 1800 dwelling that became a local bank, and was abandoned after the Civil war, and was a purchased with money the sisters raised by mortgaging their houses. Damaged by an earthquake in 1886, the building was restored with its distinctive Mansard roof and finial-topped dormer windows. Today the organization still provides housing for indigent widows as well as providing five college scholarships for women.
Wrought Iron Gates
German-born Christopher Werner created some of the most visually stunning wrought iron gates that still grace Charleston today, such as this exquisite work found at the Isaac Jenkins Mikell house on Rutledge Avenue. <img src=”Charleston Historic Gates” alt=”Wrought Iron”>
Dock Street Theatre
The Proscenium Crest above the curtain on the stage of the Dock Street Theatre is a version of the famous Order of the Garter from the English Kings, who used such symbols of heraldry as tokens of rank for various nobles. The hand-painted replica is among the many details at the Dock Street designed to give the theatre the look and feel of and old English playhouse, where such royal displays were commonplace. The unusual motto comes from the legend of the garter, a strap that holds knights’ armor in place, which from appearance seemed unmanly, thus “Honi soit qui mal y pense” or “foolish are those who think badly of others” followed by “Dieu et mon droit” “God and my right” to be king. <img src=”Dock Street Theatre” alt=”Charleston Fine Arts”>
Pineapple Fountain
The mesmerizing Pineapple Fountain at the newly-renamed #RileyWaterfrontPark is symbolic of hospitality based on an image shown in an earlier blog of Charleston’s namesake, King Charles II, accepting this healthful fruit from the new world from his royal gardener, and has since become a standard on Charleston gate posts, showing that we welcome those who come to our city.<img src=”Pineapple Fountain” alt=”Charleston Parks”>
Landmarks Charleston
The towering 182-foot spire of the Circular Congregational Church is shown in this pre-Civil War photograph. The church, designed by famed Charleston architect Robert Mills, was a domed structure when finished in 1804, and the steeple was eventually added in the 1830’s. It was the second largest domed structure in America behind the US Capitol, and a marvel of engineering with a truss-supported roof. The church stood majestically next to South Carolina Institute Hall to its right in the picture. Institute Hall, designed by Charleston architects Edward Jones and Francis Lee, and was the largest public hall in the state when finished in 1854 where South Carolina delegates were the first to sign articles of Secession breaking from the Union in December 1860. A year later, both would be in ashes after a devastating fire swept through the city in 1861. Despite such irreparable losses in historic architecture, Charleston still displays the most compelling contiguous area of colonial and antebellum architecture in America.<img src=”Circular Congregational Church” alt=”Charleston Architecture”>
Historic Charleston Hall
What opened in 1801 at a Bank of the Unites States, became Charleston’s City Hall in 1818, and in the main second story entrance hall there are still barred teller’s windows. Inscribed in the marble floor is the city seal, which includes the Latin “Civitatis Regimine Donata” meaning Given to the City Government. There are paintings of the building done before the Civil War showing that a fire-red brick facade that was eventually stuccoed over for the ivory look it has today. Among the famous figures who spoke from its front steps were U.S. President James Monroe, the Marquis de Lafayette and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Tourists see the famous building on each my tours. <img src=”City Hall Charleston” alt=”Historic Buildings”>
Spiral Stair Mystery
Some nice folks on my tour told me about the Loretto Chapel in Sante Fe that is built in the similar cantilevered style of the famous staircase at the #Nathaniel Russell House at 51 Meeting Street. The Loretto chapel was built in 1878, after Catholic nuns asked for help in building a passageway from their chapel to a choir area 22 feet above. They apparently prayed for help to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, and had their prayer answered by an anonymous builder, who fashioned the magnificent staircase to spiral upward in elliptical shape without any supporting wall.
How interesting that the 3-story staircase at the Russell house also rises three flights up without any support or the use of a single nail in its construction, and the carpenter who created it is also unknown. Even more intriguing is that the Russell house also became home to nuns in 1870, when the Sisters of Charity of Our lady of Mercy moved in and turned the house into a convent academy for young girls Today the house is a museum run by the Historic Charleston Foundation, and visitors can marvel at the structural elegance of this imposing stair.<img src=”Russell House” alt=”Historic Charleston”>
We Worship Washington
The shadow of George Washington still looms in grand fashion over historic Charleston. The first Washington presence in the city was actually George’s cousin William, who came to South Carolina to fight the British during the Revolution. William was crucial to the victory here, and fell in love with Charlestonian Jane Elliott, whom he married and lived here happily after the war. George made his visit here in May of 1791, on his tour of Southern states after his election. Charleston adored George, but George was less impressed with Charleston’s streets, and mentioned in his diary that the thoroughfares here were “like sand”. Washington was feted at the Old Exchange, where he was seated between local ladies known for their whit and good looks, and apparently the father of our country held his own with charm and intelligence to match his military record.
Today, we have #Washington Square, aka Washington Park, which the statue in the picture dominates, and which we see each day on the Charleston Footprints Tour. We also have a Washington Street near the waterfront, and the Village of Washington, a post-Revolutionary suburb near Hampton Park. One of Charleston’s most fabled organizations is the Washington Light Infantry, a military unit established in 1807, which has fought with distinction both for and against the United States, and whose towering obelisk is the central focus of Washington Square.
On President’s day here in Charleston, we tend to favor the great George, a fellow-Southerner who won our respect and our hearts, as well as helping win our liberty. <img src=”Statue George Washington” alt=” Charleston SC”>
Cannonball Showcase
It’s not unusual to see cannonballs and other ordnance decorating Charleston locations, because there is certainly more where that came from. The city has twice been subjected to bombardment from besieging troops – in 1780 by the British, and from 1863-65 by Federal troops in the #Civil War. Contrary to the popular conception that these balls, shot and shells were fired into the city by ships, by far the largest amount came from land-based guns. Ship cannons in historic times rarely had the ability to be angled high enough to fired great distances, whereas land guns could easily be set at a trajectory that allowed great range. The British did fire into the city from ships that came very close to the peninsula, but they also used guns placed at land approaches to a city they had surrounded by 1780. Some of the British guns were placed West of the Ashley River, about were the neighborhood of Moreland is today, and launched both explosive balls and solid shot at patriot fortifications. Just last year, a 22-pound solid ball was unearthed on Savage Street, which would have been the western line of American defenses during the Revolution.
More common and plentiful were the bullet-shaped explosive shells of the Federal guns mounted on and around Morris Island. These huge rifled cannons, called Parrott Rifles, could fire 200-pound projectiles in excess of 4 miles, and also included rounds mixed with pitch and tar to ignite fires. One single gun near Cummings Point fired 4606 shells into Charleston in the Fall of 1863 before its muzzle exploded, and estimated are as high as 22,000 rounds fired by Northern troops at Charleston. Some folks have dug these projectiles up, and the proper procedure is to call in the Air Force Base Bomb Squad, as the black powder inside still may be dangerous. However, as much as Charlesonians like their artifacts, many are willing to disarm the shells themselves, and a certain prominent attorney who lives on Tradd Street still displays a 200-pound Parrott shell in his hallway that was dug up by a contractor, who simply sat the shell in a garbage can full of water for several days to assure it was defused. <img src=”Civil War” alt=”Historic Charleston”>