Tour of Charleston

  On the first morning we were in Charleston, we took a carriage tour of the city to get acquainted.  It was such a great way to learn a lot of history, as well as see a bunch of the sights.  Here's my little tour of some of Charleston, not necessarily everything we saw on the carriage ride.

 

 

 

  Rainbow row.  A row of 13 colorful historic houses.  They used to be along the Cooper River waterfront and bustling storefronts, but the waterfront has now moved since land was filled in.

In a world run by Lindsay, this is how every street would be painted.  I love color! 

As you walk south from Rainbow Row along the water, you find these giant mansions on your right.

These were much larger than the traditional singlehouse you would see all over downtown Charleston.

 

 Singlehouses are one room wide, with the sides of the houses facing the street.  The front door of the house was on the side and led you straight to the porch.  This provided more privacy and the porch was also considered a part of the home. This architecture made for dealing with the hot and humid days without AC as the cross-ventilation was most efficient.  They faced them in ways so that the sun would not set directly into your home as well.  From what I hear about Charleston humidity, even this well-engineered architecture would have me melting in the summers.

 

View of the mansions from the water.

 

 

  If you continute to walk south all the way to the southern most tip of Charleston is The Battery which is now a beautiful park, promenade and line up of mortars and cannons.  It used to be a defensive seawall, situated at the point where the Ashley and Cooper Rivers intersect.

  Other history we learned along the tour was where the Ashley River waterfront used to be before the land was filled in.  This house was home to an important military person during one of the wars, that I am sure Mike remembers more about than I do.  I was trying my best, but Charleston was important in the Revolutionary and Civil War and I kept getting confused about who went with what war!  Anyway, they built to impress, and I'm sure at that time it was impressive as it is still to this day.

  

  We learned of other historical places such as The Powder Magazine, which held gun powder since the Revolutionary War.  Soldiers from the Civil War knew of this place and would write home to tell that they had seen this historic place.  In the pictures on the right are 3 pieces of Charleston's oldest living history.

  Finally, and most interesting to me, as we rode around in the carriage and I was admiring the charm, our tour guide pointed out the brick building behind this "charming" house.  Slave quarters.  Not built to withstand the heat and humidity, almost what look likes a place for animals instead of human beings.  Not sure what it is currently being used for or how the owners felt about it when they bought this place.  Crazy.  Can you even imagine?  I must say that seeing this made me realize that all of the charm I was enjoying was all slave labor.

  Slavery was something we really wanted to investigate while being down here, so we also visited the Old Slave Mart which is the location that they once sold slaves on auction before the Civil War.  The selling of Africans used to be done outside in public until the community complained and they moved it indoors.  There was a jail in the back of the mart and a kitchen so that they could feed them to make them look better for sale.  Right before they went up for auction, the lender would literally grease them up and tell them what to say to market themselves.  Families were split, people were bought and sold like cattle, and then they were under the leadership of someone who could do something like split families up and buy people like cattle.  It was such a sad time in America's history.

  However, we did learn some interesting facts that you don't learn in history class.  Did you know that there were free people of color in the South?  And they could own land.  Now, they had to somehow have bought their freedom and then saved enough to buy their land, but this was possible.  Also, some free people of color could also own slaves and some did.  They were very much still living in a white society, but this goes to show that not all of the South believed the same thing.  In fact, one of the tour guides mentioned that the South won the war, and this was in reference to the fact that a lot of southerners believe the same way that the North did.

 

  We learned more about slaves during the week, but this is my "short" overview of some of the tourist attractions of Charleston.  So fun for me to relive this with you, and some of my favorite parts are to come.  It almost feels like a dream now, being away with Mike for a whole week without the kids was so surreal, so far from reality.  And so worth it!!