Sights Of Historic Charleston

I will conclude our vacation blog with some sights from the carriage tour. One of the many unique aspects of the historic Charleston houses are the wonderful two story porches, the piazzas. These porches were designed to collect the southern summer breezes and provide some relief from the humid summers in the Charleston area. It is interesting that there is always a house door which is locked that leads onto the piazza.

There are so many wonderful historic churches in this area.

The Powder Magazine below is a gunpowder magazine in Charleston and the oldest surviving public building in the Carolinas. It was erected in 1713 by colonial settlers as a place to safely store and centralize their gunpowder supplies. It was also involved in the 1780 siege of Charleston. The Powder Magazine was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989. It has operated as a museum since the early 1900s, although extensive renovations have since been conducted.

Here is another interesting fact of the historic Charleston houses - the shutter paint.


I know the shutters on the house above seems as if they are painted black. Thy be wrong! The shutters, painted in what looks like black, is actually "Charleston green" - a color rooted in the black paint given to Charleston by the federal government after the Civil War. The paint that the citizens, the story goes, could not bear to use as it was, for not only was did it resonate with mourning, it was from the Yankees, so they tinted it with a bit of yellow to make Charleston Green.

You can buy "Charleston Green" by the gallon in stores like Lowes and WalMart. You know you have arrived when you can buy a spray can of Rustoleum in this color!

As we get closer to the center of the historic area, the crafters start appearing. Especially the folks who make those great sweetgrass baskets.

Sweetgrass is a native, perennial, warm-season grass found growing sparsely in the coastal dunes extending from North Carolina to Texas. The "treads" or long, narrow leaf blades of this grass have been harvested by direct descendents of enslaved Africans of antebellum South Carolina and used as the principle foundation material for constructing African coiled basketry in the Southeast, especially near Charleston. Originally, these graceful products provided useful, practical objects or "work baskets" for agricultural and household use on the plantations; today, they have evolved as souvenirs treasured by tourists, and elegant objets d'art

If you think that you will bring home a medium sized sweetgrass basket for under $100, you are dreaming! Even small baskets sell for several hundreds of dollars.

Basketmakers are faced with changes and challenges that threaten the existence of their craft. The supply of sweetgrass is becoming more difficult to acquire because the natural habitats of sweetgrass have significantly diminished. Two primary factors have led to this situation. First, the urbanization of the area around Mt. Pleasant/Isle of Palms has led to the destruction of much of the natural sweetgrass plant communities. Second, the traditional gathering areas on the Barrier Islands off the coast of Charleston, have been developed as beach resorts or private communities with restricted access. Basketmakers now have to travel to Georgia and Florida to find adequate supplies.


After the carriage ride, we ate a late lunch on the roof of a local eatery.

We shared our gourmet experience with this cool dude!

It was another great time in historic Charleston!