CHARLESTON" HERITAGE

Southern Living

This isn't a museum, this is a house that is still lived in by descendants of the original owners. The owner, a widow, is good friends with the small tour operator that brought us here. It might as well be a museum for all the old furnishings that are still in use. We were told the handmade rug alone was worth more that all the antique furniture in this room.

Nearly every home has a veranda and almost universally they are perpendicular to the street. Long ago when these stately structures were built, the taxing authorities billed you by the frontage of house that faced the street. The solution was to build a narrow but long house. Ironically this home (and a loarge percentage of Old Town houses) are called "singlewides" as all room widths are the same as what is seen from the street - they are not split internally.

That same seawall picture from the last blog entry showed the tidal flats exposed. Now, later in the day, the tide is deep enough to fish those same flats. This man was maximizing his efforts with three rods. After touring the home above I saw him walking away and asked what kind of luck he had. Thumbs down was his answer.

This home embodied my idea of what southern living should look like. 

This ornate palace is known by locals as the Wedding Cake House. 

More formally it is called Two Meeting Street Inn and rooms run $250 to $450

The Manigault House is now a museum operated by the Charleston Museum. It dates back to 1803 and marks some of the Huguenot heritage of Charleston. Our bus tour did not stop here so there are better pictures (& full history) of this notable house at: http://www.charlestonmuseum.org/joseph-manigault-house

This is the back side of St. Michael's Anglican Church. It is the oldest surviving religious structure in Charleston and was erected in the 1750s. The approach we made to town was by water and we could see that the skyline is pierced with quite a few church spires. It is said there are over 400 places of worship in the greater city limits. For this reason one of the town's nicknames is "The Holy City".