Category: Notable Buildings

Notable Buildings

Quintessential Queen

The eye-catching look of #Two Meeting Street Inn is very unique to Charleston in its very distinctive Queen Anne Style. This type of Victorian-era architecture was based on details that had become popular in the early 1700’s when Anne was Queen of England. What is notable are the asymmetrical shapes and bulging windows with rounded glass and extended spandrels, as well as gable roofing and wooden fish-scale cladding. The circa 1902 house was built as the honeymoon home of Waring Carrington and Martha Williams Carrington. According to legend the money came from a  cash wedding gift of $75,000 given by Martha’s father George Walton Williams, a local banker who had built the Williams (now Calhoun) Mansion farther up Meeting Street, who reportedly left the money under Martha’s pillow. The house is now a popular  inn, and surely guests must hope they’ll find a gift from the ghost of Mr. Williams under their pillows.<img src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”Two Meeting Street Inn ”>

Buccaneers Backinhere

The Pirates Courtyard on #Church Street has a wealth of legends concerning pirates who once made this a destination, and like so many stories handed down verbally from the past, it is hard to say which may be true. Certainly pirates did roam the seas offshore in the early days of the colonial city. They raided ships that brought goods in and out of Charleston Harbor, so were considered outlaws and dozens were hanged in 1718. The legend is that they continued to visit the city, secretly entering through tunnels under the cover of darkness and wandering to taverns, such as this site, and were served in back courtyards to avoid detection. This building dates to that era and was used as a tavern, and it does have a substantial underground cellar that extends into the street, which may well have been a secret passage. <img src=”Charleston Legends” alt=”Pirates Courtyard ”>

Rodgers’ Rouge

The towering mansion that Francis Rodgers built in the 1880’s features bricks that were highlighted by iron oxides in the kiln process to give them a distinctive hue, and highlighted by stone quoins and a Mansard roof, this 14,000 square foot structure is hard to miss. Rodgers was a very successful businessman and councilman in #Charleston after the Civil War, and was dedicated to creating the first public fire department, which he helped organize in 1881. The architect who designed the house, Daniel Wayne, would also design the three first public fire houses in the city. Today the Rodgers Mansion is a hotel called the Wentworth Mansion, from the name of the street if faces, but the structure should be called for the person who created its fire-red bricks and Charleston’s firehouses, Francis Rodgers. <img src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”Rodgers Mansion”>

Slave Trade

The Old Slave Mart Museum tells a sadly tragic story of human bondage that was once legally protected by the US Constitution. Slavery began in earnest in Charleston during the 18th century, when rice cultivation became a major source  of wealth. Rice was grown in steamy wetlands filled with mosquitoes which European workers were not used to. In West Africa, people had been planting rice in similar conditions for centuries, and factions there had long been selling people into slavery. So West Africa become the source of a bustling #slave trade that was largely kept intact by three very different groups – New England ship owners, West African slave traders, and Southern planters. The importation of slaves was made illegal in America as of 1808, but the slave population in the Charleston area had grown to the tens of thousands by then, and small markets such as this were carrying on a domestic slave trade until the end of the Civil War. Today, the museum features artifacts and implements from slave life and slave sales, as well as memorials to those poor souls were bought and sold inside.<img src=”Slave Trade” alt=”Charleston History”>

Silent Sentinels

In the 1880’s three fire bell towers were erected in #Charleston, and attached to the new technology, electricity, as a “electric telegraph” system was created    to send fire alarms. The wires connected to various boxes throughout the city, in which there was a large key handle in a mechanism that, when turned, sent an electric current to one of the three fire houses and showed the source of the electric power on a city grid. The alarm also automatically raised barriers inside the fire houses where horse were kept, so that they could swiftly be harnessed to fire engines and on their way to the fire location. <img src=”Fire Towers” alt=”Historic Charleston”>

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”>

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”>

Charleston Skyline

The People’s Bank Building, completed in 1911, was part of the effort by Charleston Mayor Robert Goodwyn Rhett to bring the old city into a new modern century with its first high-rise office building. The 8-story, 121-foot edifice, which is now simply called The People’s Building,  was distinguished by its yellow Stoney Landing Brick and an overhanging cornice that was damaged by hurricane in 1938 and removed. But despite Rhett’s intentions, the modern building was considered an eyesore, and was one of the reasons this part of the city has height restrictions today. Charleston is divided into height zones, and this part of the city is designated 55/30, meaning nothing can be built higher than 55 feet and nothing lower than 30 feet to prevent such changes to the historic skyline. <img src=”People’s Building” 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”>