Charleston's historic fabric

One of the big changes in our life after Covid and having children has been a sharp increase in domestic travel. Our bias before 2020 was to travel the world as much as possible. However, these days, given how much easier it is to travel domestically, we’ve been exploring parts of America that we have never seen before.

What these experiences have helped me realize is that, though the United States can be seen as a single monolithic country from a map, it is far from that. Every city and every region has its own way of life and unique history.

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Where I live in the Bay Area, almost everything is new. Fifty years ago, our neighborhood was fruit orchards. Today the environment is defined by mid-century modern homes and glitzy office complexes.

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Some places, for example, New York and Chicago, are a mix of both old and new. There are prominent traces of prerevolutionary history as well as the living, breathing elements of contemporary culture.

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Some places feel more like time capsules. Their built environments were largely established centuries ago. One of these places is Charleston, South Carolina.

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North Charleston Fire Museum

Given the number of kids in our group, we had to visit the North Charleston Fire Museum. This museum is quite unassuming from the outside with a simple brick exterior. It was quite a surprise to see what it housed inside — a comprehensive history of fire vehicles and technology spanning a century. Though many of the historic, restored vehicles are behind protective glass, there were plenty of interactive zones, including a few fire trucks to sit in.

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All of us, both adults and children, came away with a renewed appreciation for one of the public services that is always working away in the background, keeping us safe.

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Magnolia Plantation and Gardens

Next, we went to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. The plantation finds its origins in the 17th and 18th centuries among the Drayton family.

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This, of course, deeply intertwines the site with the fraught history of slavery and labor. The family home and former slave quarters have been preserved till today. They stand as a reminder of the human side of old places like this.

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The sprawling gardens are without question beautiful. The winding paths and scenic vistas offer plenty of space for contemplation and photography. The gardens have been continuously reimagined over the years, so today there are quite a variety of styles on display.

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International African American Museum

A modern addition to the city of Charleston is the International African American Museum. It is located at Gadsden’s Wharf, the historic entry point for enslaved Africans in Charleston.

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The museum is a contemporary slab-like structure elevated above grade to respect the wharf and the surrounding site.

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Inside, we found experiences and audiovisual artifacts portraying the legacy of slavery all the way to current African-American culture. While I had studied slavery in school and had visited the National Museum of African-American History, I still came away learning many new things.

One example is the Gullah people, who till this day speak a creole dialect of English influenced by African languages. Their cuisine and handicraft are both derived from West African culture.

Single house

In architecture, singular monumental works like the Eiffel Tower or the Sydney Opera House are memorable. However, when it comes to understanding a place’s history, nothing matches vernacular architecture. One example is the Charleston single house.

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Though these houses can be found in various architectural styles, such as Federal and Victorian, and in various heights, there is a consistent layout throughout all of them. The first defining feature is the porch, sometimes multi-story, that extends on one side of the house from the street to the back. At the center of the porch is the actual front door to the house that opens into a large hallway where the staircase is also located. On either side of this hallway is a single room, which gives this form of house its name.

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Once we saw and understood one of these houses, we started to see them everywhere. Some on the edges of town are clearly worse for wear. Others, especially in the historic districts, still stand majestically above the street, looking nearly identical to the day they were built.

Folly Island

One of the final places we visited before continuing on to our next destination (Savannah, Georgia) was Folly Island. The low-lying island with its carpet of beach cottages was the perfect foil to the much more regal and historical city of Charleston. Though we were there in the winter when the weather was too cold for swimming, we still enjoyed beachcombing and dipping our feet in the water.

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A Place drenched in history

First settled in the late 17th century, Charleston played a leading role in colonial America, the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War. Just before the American Revolution, it was the fourth largest port in the colonies after only Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

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It is important to note that not all of what was imported were goods. Charleston was by far the largest slave port in the North American slave trade. Gadsden’s Wharf, where the IAAM is now located, was both the largest single port and auction site for slaves in the United States. Then, in 1861, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter just outside Charleston, starting the American Civil War.

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After the end of the war and the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the great cities of the Northeast began to outpace the big cities of the South in population, economics, and politics. So Charleston, though it has changed, hasn’t changed as much as places like New York or Boston.

This means visiting there gave us the opportunity to see the traces of American life centuries ago, and of some of the most consequential yet regretful parts of our history.

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Thanks to Q for reading drafts of this.