CHARLESTON OLDTOWN

Commercial Charm

Daughter of the Confederacy? No but that's the name of the upstairs museum that Beth is standing in front of. More formally the structure is known as the City Market building. The market extends back for at least three blocks and begins under the archway. Many of the merchants were offering higher end goods - artwork and the like.

Some of the items unique to this area (and found at the City Market) are sweetgrass baskets woven by local blacks. There is a whole culture including a separate language called "Gullah". This term also describes the name they give themselves. Learning that there is even a long established Gullah culture came as a complete surprise to me. For more go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah

Charleston has made great use of most all of their historic buildings. Built in 1861, this is the old Rice Exchange which has been converted to a convention center.

 City hall was nearly ruined by Hurrican Hugo in 1989. Now it practically shines. As an aside, we took advantage of their public restrooms and found them to be the cleanest and most modern facility that we'd ever seen. It was a pleasure to, ah, sit for a spell.

A pretty typical commercial block of shops. There is only one building over 4 stories (seen at far right) in Old Town so there is a pleasing uniformity to the district. Charleston actually has several divisions to its Old Town: colonial, antebellum and post civil war.

This is the first of two custom houses in Charleston's history. The Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon served first as a colonial trade building and dates back to 1771.  Not many buildings in America can boast of having a dungeon. Though started by the colonial owners, the Brits, the dungeon was later used to imprison them during the Revolutionary War. Talk about karma. Some sources also say that this building housed a brothel after the Civil War.

This second custom house looks more like a courthouse than anything else. Started before the Civil War but not completed until well after in 1879. It survived a major 7.0 earthquake in Charleston in August of 1886. This bought an "End Time" crazy out of the woodwork. A man known locally as the Ottawa Prophet, emerged to proclaim that a more powerful disaster would occur at 2 pm on September 29. His believers freaked, quit working, put on their "ascension robes" and waited for the end of the world.

Talk about a town with more than their share of architectural, cultural and American history!