Charleston - Museum, Carriage Ride, Bus Mini-Tour

Charleston – History Museum (Tuesday 19th - morning)

The very first stop on our tour was the Charleston History Museum. It was quite close- a 0.3 mile walk and less than 2 minute drive. Our tour guide Patti joked it would take longer to load the bus than to walk there. But ride we did since directly from there we would be leaving for our first quilt shop in Summerville. The lobby attested to how eclectic the museum was. At one entrance the visitor would be looking down the bore of a cannon. Overhead hung the skeleton of a whale. The gift shop had all sorts of gifts for bird lovers.

The Charleston Museum is one is the oldest in the country. We had less than two hours there. Wikipedia states the collection strengths of the museum as

• Charleston furniture
• Charleston silver
• Lowcountry textiles, including costumes, quilts, and needlework
• South Carolina ceramics
• Egyptian artifacts
• Archives - documentary and photographic resources
• South Carolina ornithology
• Nineteenth-century firearms
• Invertebrate and Vertebrate Paleontology Collections
• Skeletal Reconstructions of various Vertebrate Groups
• Rocks and Minerals from around the World
• Numerous Plant and Animal species collected by local Naturalists

We were fortunate to have scheduled for us a private behind-the-scenes tour of the textile collection. Look at the tiny fussy cut, hand pieced mini-hexagons in this quilt.

This marble faced clock is from the Charleston police station on Hutson and King Street from 1880 to 1900. It was connected to a fire alarm system to register the time of fires by stopping when an alarm sounded.

I took a picture of this circa 1900 flute formerly owned by a member of the 4th Brigade Band in Charleston because I too play the flute, although not in the previous century. Per the information card in the case a celebratory ribbon of 13 stars and an eagle is at the base of the blonde wood portion of the flute. It is faint but the image can still be made out.

This fish scaled dollhouse attests to dedicated skill and workmanship of whoever crafted it.

The intricate metal work on this bench impressed me.

Here is a loom typical of one used by women on a plantation in the 18th and 19th century. An accompanying signage stated that the "perhaps most demanding was providing the family, and indeed the entire plantation, with clothing and household textiles."

Here is a cotton scale used to weigh cotton bales for shipment. Smaller scales were used to monitor enslaved people productivity in picking the cotton.

A quick run through of the Historic Textile Gallery  revealed many clothes of the era. In the next photo are seen a boy's set of rompers and a mother and daughter's matching ensembles.

Our time in the museum was limited and so our visit was not extensive enough to be all inclusive. But I had seen enough to be satisfied. The Charleston furniture, silverware, and firearms, held little allure for me and the skeletons, rocks, and minerals I could see in other museums. Besides, I was anticipating going to the quilt shop in Summerville

Charleston – Quilt Shop in Summerville (Tuesday 19th - afternoon)

People, Places, and Quilts was about a half hour drive northwest. The town called Summerville was so named because people would vacation there in the summer. Details of my shopping spree there and enjoyment of the town is in my DianeLoves2Quilt blog in the post dated 3/27/19.
Charleston – Carriage Ride (Tuesday 19th - evening)
We started at the red barn of the Palmetto Carriage Works, "the oldest carriage tour company in Charleston".

As with any business that employs animals, we were assured that they were not overworked or mistreated. Out driver lamented that they got more breaks than he did and had a better retirement plan. 

Our group was split up into three carriages and as we waited to board, Frank made friends with his Native American friend carved in wood.

Boarding was rushed as the Charleston has strict rules to distribute the horse drawn carriages evenly both in location and time throughout the city. Each carriage has a 15 minute window in which to leave and must pass a starting post where they are handed information on which route they are to follow. There are about six different options, handed out somewhat randomly. If a carriage is late, it is not permitted to leave and must wait for another window of time. This distribution solution does lead to the dilemma that even if the riders take a tour multiple times, they cannot be assured they will get a different route. One has to have faith that all routes cover approximately the same areas and point of interest, just form a  different viewing angle or proximity. My iPhone has the feature in its photo app that it drops a pin at the location a photo was taken. I used this embedded information to approximately map the route our carriage took. Our narrated tour began at the northernmost point on the following map, wending its way in a southwesterly fashion.

As we headed down Church Street we saw the iconic steeple of Saint Philip's Episcopal Church. Established in 1681, St. Philip's is the oldest European-American religious congregation in South Carolina. The church building itself was initially a wooden structure damaged in a hurricane, then destroyed by fire, and finally relocated and built at its present location in 1836. Unlike a museum where you can read posters to learn facts, on a talking tour you only hear thing and for me, a visual learner, that is hard to remember. I will recall anecdotal stories here and there but dates? Wikipedia to the rescue!

Not far from St. Philip's was The Powder Magazine. Gun powder was stored in it during the American Revolution. Stucco walls three feet thick at the base taper to be thinner at top and funnel any blast upward and the roof is loaded with sand to smother any subsequent flames. Is is the oldest public building surviving in the then province – not yet state – of North Carolina.

As we continued west along Broad street we saw the Cathedral of St John the Baptist, very impressive looking with all the spires and awesome stained glass windows. It is is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston. The structure dates back to the later half of the 1800's.

As we continued on southward we crossed Broad street. We were told what special meaning  the phrase "South of Broad" had. It is kind of like the opposite of the wrong side of the tracks. South of road is the where one find the homes of the wealthy. We were alerted to take note of the super sculpted fancy gardens behind the wrought iron fences.

As our carriage continued southward toward the water front, I took note of our intersection, South Battery and Lenwood Blvd. Yes. We were indeed "South of Broad". When I queried Wikipedia about the term I was lead to a novel South of Broad written in 2009 by Pat Conroy. Wikipedia gives a rather detailed synopsis and Amazon gives several reviews averaging 4 stars. Perhaps I may add this book to my reading list to take in after my Charleston immersion. Maybe. Maybe not. It sounds long and perhaps not too uplifting but gaining a feeling for the area might be worth it.

After the large mansion-like homes, we continued our journey to another extreme, toward the Old Charleston Jail and graveyard. We peered down Magazine Street at the dilapidated prison building. Our tour guide told of dire condition in the jail due to cholera and other diseases. Terms of imprisonment there could be as shortened, endured for only a few weeks in length, due to death from illnesses. The deceased inmates were buried in the nearby graveyard.

We did not go down Magazine Street in front of the prison – the next photo is from Wikipedia – but I understand there are jail tours that are available for the curious.

The houses in the vicinity of the jail district had a distinctive color of blue on the porch ceilings and, in some cases, on the front door and door jambs. The color is like a Robin's egg blue but called Haint blue. Per Wikipedia

Haint blue is a pale shade of blue that is traditionally used to paint porch ceilings in the Southern United States. The tradition originated with the Gullah in Georgia and South Carolina, but has also been adopted by White Southerners. [...] The word haint is an alternative spelling of haunt, which was historically used in African-American vernacular to refer to a ghost or, in the Hoodoo belief, a witch-like creature seeking to chase victims to their death by exhaustion.

Hard to detect in the shadowed picture of porch ceilings in the previous photo, here is a sample of Robin's egg blue. If you ever wondered why this bird's eggs are blue check out the article Why Are Robin Eggs Blue?

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After our carriage ride, our bus driver Rick took us on a mini-tour in an area of the peninsula the horse drawn carriage ride had not covered. We headed south down East Battery Street and past  the famed  Rainbow Row of pastel painted Charleston houses.

As we drove by I snapped picture after photo through bus window of the houses as we passed them. This is my resulting collage.

At the website https://freetoursbyfoot.com/what-is-rainbow-row/ I screen captured a better photo and the story behind each house is told. If time had permitted I would have loved to fit in a walking tour of these architecturally unique homes. They remind me somewhat of the Painted Lady Houses of San Francisco fame.

 
We continued south on East Battery past these lovely homes.

As we approached the southern most corner, we turned right from East battery onto South Battery.

 
We and continued along the shoreline with a beautiful sunset view.

After returning to the Francis Marion Hotel for our third and final night there, Frank and I took a short walk to have a light dinner at the nearby Panera Bread. It was diagonally across from the Francis Marion Hotel, looking out on Marion Park and with yet another church steeple in the distant left, this time of the Emmanuel AME Church. We were looking forward to relaxing and sleeping. It had been a four activity day! 

Charleston – Arrival, Harbor, City Market

March 17th through March 24th Frank and I went on a Country Heritage Tour where we stayed three nights in Historic Charleston,  and two nights each in Savannah, and Jekyll Island. This WanderOrPonder post is the first of a series recounting my thoughts and our experiences. I picked this particular tour because it was concentrated in a part of the country we knew little about and because this tour offered by "America's Favorite Quilt Tour Company", had the least quilt-specific-only attractions in deference to keeping Frank engaged.

We did stop at three fabric stores but those three locations I dwelt on in three posts in my DianeLoves2Quilt blog, where I detail my purchases at each People, Places, and Quilts in Summerville SC (post dated 3/27/19) , Sew Much More in Savannah GA (post dated 3/28/19), and Cinnamon's Quilt Shoppe in Jacksonville FL (post dated 3/29/19).

Charleston – Travel Day, Arrival (Sunday 17th)

We flew out from California to South Carolina through Houston. During our Houston layover we took in a few stores and sights at the airport.

A ceiling sculpture was a open mesh wiry annulus embedded with flying items of varied kinds; this section shows birds, bubble bees, butterflies. In other areas were man-made objects: biplanes, gliders, jets. It was really quite pretty.

The lounge to keep little one amused before flights and during layovers was cute, also.

A store caught my eye because of the unique illumination of the shop's ceiling with a structure of small scale milk bottles illuminated with tiny-lights inserted within and because of colorful, peacock-like headliner signage claiming the business's name as Desigual.

The display behind the register reminded me of a cross between a peacock and a kaleidoscope. It would make a lovely round quilt with wreaths of lacy leaves!

In the same vein of the sign and store emblem, I saw and tried on this blouse. Frank says I emerged from the fitting room with a big smile on my face when it fit. We bought it and the purchases of our trip had begun.

When we completed the second leg of our flight and landed at Charleston International Airport (CHS), I was on the lookout for a logo or distinctive marking with which to document where we were. All I could come up with, glimpsed through a passageway window, was the exterior of another section of our masonry building with CHARLESTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT chiseled in stone on the facade.

Even a Google image search yield me not much more that its logo.

I did however come a cross a strangely named eatery within, Caviar & Bananas. Had we not been tired from our travels and anxious to locate and collapse in our hotel, Frank and I might have checked it out. Their sign/logo features a stylized fish and a banana in a circle format. Later research told me that they were billed as a gourmet market and café. Caviar & Bananas was founded in 2008 in downtown Charleston, SC. Their menu includes

Espresso & Tea,,Pastries, Cookies, and Sweets, Sandwiches & Salads, Charcuterie & Cheese, Chocolates, Candies, Dried Fruits and Nuts, Craft Beer and Wine, Specialty Packaged Foods & Snack. C&B prides itself on its ‘from scratch’ motto

Instead we doggedly forged on and took a cab to our home base for the next three nights, the Francis Marion Hotel. We walked into an elegantly appointed lobby area. The hotel is named after the military officer Francis Marion who served in the American Revolutionary War. His nickname was Swamp Fox and the associated restaurant bears that moniker.

Acting with the Continental Army and South Carolina militia commissions, he was a persistent adversary of the British in their occupation of South Carolina and Charleston in 1780 and 1781, even after the Continental Army was driven out of the state in the Battle of Camden. Marion used irregular methods of warfare and is considered one of the fathers of modern guerrilla warfare and maneuver warfare, and is credited in the lineage of the United States Army Rangers and the other American military Special Forces such as the "Green Berets". He was known as The Swamp Fox.

The letter box in the lobby was a gleaming brass embossed beauty connected to an old system of messaging through pipelines via compressed air or partial vacuum within pneumatic tubes. 

It made for nice decor next to the elevators.

I have a friend who once claimed, "Old houses have character, but new houses have closets." Our experience with our room was the same. It was neat, clean, and stylishly appointed but the clearance between the bathroom door and the bed was fractions of an inch, minimal lighting seemed reminiscent of an era of gaslit rooms, and there was only one rather stiff desk chair with no other place to relax and read. The  magnificent lobby could be used for literary browsing and we planned to spend the bulk of our time exploring Charleston and not our room, so we were content to sleep well in our room and giggle while sidling past each other getting dressed in the morning and prepping for bed at night. Shortly after checking in, we ventured outdoors to catch some dinner. Francis Marion has an impressive appearance from outdoors also.

It was suggested we walk northward on King Street, the street passing in front of the hotel. The points of interest we were to take in during our Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday stay in Charleston are showed on the following map. All are within walking distance. The routes in blue are not necessarily the paths we took but rather the relative locations and nearness of the sights. Often one of the nice perks about a stay in a city is the proximity of venues. In this case one extreme to another is approximately 2.3 miles.

As we started out form our hotel we passed the first of the many churches we would see within the "Holy City",  as Charleston is nicknamed. Although not one of the seven famous or historic churches, I liked the architecture on the door and windows of this St. Matthew's Lutheran church.

I also like their sense of humor is dealing with a less than fastidious local issue.

As we continued northward we noted that Sunday night was alive with St. Patrick's Day revelers and King Street was chock full of boisterous millennials within bars resounded of raucous laughter and music not of our generation. Frank and I had a hard time finding a place for a calm post-travel light meal. (Holy City? Yeah... right!) We wound up at a pizza place, not our first choice for a nutritious low fat light meal but it was timely and they sold by the slice. The place did have character – of a sort – and was called Benny Ravello's. We learned from its website that

Ravello is a coastal vacation town in Italy much like Charleston with its natural beauty and international attraction. ... Benny Ravello's opened in 2017 on Upper King street after years of hunting for the right location. We [They] are blessed to be hurling 28" pies on the wildest coastal street in the U.S.

The pieces of pizza were huge. It took two paper plates to hold one slice. Neither Frank nor I finished our slice. He had sausage; I had pepperoni.

There was a sign in the tiny, narrow, store with seating only at stools stashed by tables hung off the wall that advertised a contest with a $500 prize for eating an entire 28" diameter pizza in less than an hour.  We did not try. No other customer attempted the feat – at least not while we were there.

Charleston – Harbor Tour (Monday 18th)

The welcome meeting for our tour group was not until evening so Frank and I had the day to ourselves in Charleston.  Having walked north from our hotel the night before we headed east toward the water, crossing train tracks with no crossing gates and sporting this "no warning" sign.

Our destination was for an 11:00 am tour of Charleston Harbor.

Our ship was the Carolina Belle. She had an upper deck viewing area at her bow

and a lower enclosed viewing area.

Our route headed southward out into the harbor toward Fort Sumter, then circled counterclockwise past some waterside home of the wealthy. One useless fact that created another wrinkle in my brain was that the owner of one of the homes of the wealthy had spent several million dollars to import hurricane proof windows from Europe. We continued on past the air craft carrier Yorktown, and then under the Arthur Ravenel Bridge that carries traffic across the Cooper River.

Fort Sumter was a five sided brick structure built on seventy thousand tons of granite hauled from Boston into the Charleston Harbor. It's construction began after the War of 1812 and was as yet unfinished before the start of the Civil war in 1861. Prior to the advent of aircraft, defense of sea ports was crucial in military tactics. On April 12, 1861 the first shots of the Civil War were fired from Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter is notable for two battles in the Civil War where the Confederate troops prevailed over the Union troops.

Onward to another era in time, we passed the aircraft carrier the USS Yorktown (CV-10). She was named to commemorate the loss of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) in the Battle of Midway. She was the recovery ship for the Apollo 8 space mission. Frank would have loved to tour her but our schedules did not work out to do so. Decommissioned in 1970, she became a National Landmark and a museum in the harbor  in 1975.

Next our tour headed out toward the Arthur Ravenel Bridge, named after a Senator who happened to be in the legislature as the time of its building and was instrumental in its funding.

We drove over it at a later point in our Country Heritage Tour but it was really unique to have our boat pass under it. We paused directly beneath and the captain blew the horn of the Carolina Belle.

The sound of the horn echoed, and echoed, and echoed, and echoed – truthfully about six or seven times! It was amazing.

I have no pictures of the Charleston skyline as viewed from the harbor. I think that is because from a distance nothing dominates. There are many church steeples but they are all relatively the same height. There is no distinctive Transamerica Pyramid like in San Francisco or a Sears Tower like in Chicago. Charleston is called the Holy City because of all its churches.  In fact there is an architectural ban against building anything higher that the tallest steeple. 

On our return path to our starting dock we passed several dolphins along side our boat arcing gracefully above the harbors waters. We were told it was dolphin mating season and we did witness several pairs of dolphins, um, intimately involved shall we say? As we disembarked Frank and I had our photo taken on the dock.

Charleston – City Market (Monday 18th)
To prove we were in Charleston I took our signature photo of feet near something bearing the name of where we are. Notice the tree with the crossed cannons at its base on the water meter cover plate. It is a Palmetto Tree and South Carolina is called the Palmetto State - not because it has a lot of palmetto trees but rather because of how important the tree was to the state in time of war. When the British invaded Charleston harbor in 1776, a fort on Sullivan Island built out of palmetto logs repelled their attack. Because of the spongy vascular structure of the palmetto logs, cannon balls were absorbed or bounced back onto the beach. The British Navy was turned away in within a day. Subsequently the British were unable to gain a foothold in the southern states.

We pressed onward to the City Market which dates back to continuous use as an open air market since 1807 with intermittent use before then since after the American Revolution.

Charleston City Market consists of a four-city block length of long sheds with vendors selling their wares within. This 4 minute long YouTube video gives a good feel for inside the market area. You may be able to spot the booth for Caviar and Bananas, a store we first noticed at the Charleston International Airport.

We made no purchases here, just imbibed the hustle and bustle ambience. After we emerged from the western end of the line open air, covered shopping structures, we ate lunch at a restaurant named for its cross road location Meeting and Market.

It was a kind of quiet and refreshing place to sit down and people watch both indoors and out as we ate. We had a table right by the window.

Diagonal from the restaurant was The Confederate Museum now operated by Charleston Chapter #4 United Daughters of the Confederacy. This was our view of the historic building while we sat and ate.

Frank is waiting patiently (sort of) for his lunch.

It was worth the wait. His freshly caught piece of fish was positively huge and the side dish of "street corn" was delicious.

By now it was late afternoon and we strolled northward along Meeting Street back to the Francis Marion Hotel.

Along the way we paused to watch a shiny red fire engine backing into an arched opening of a charming brick fire station. We did not realize how good our timing was.

Per the official government website for Charleston SC

Charleston Fire Department Station 2/3, or Central Station, houses Engine 102 and Engine 103. Built in 1887 as a double "double house", it was considered the most important station in the City due to its central location and housed 4 steam engine companies. It became Headquarters for the Department in 1974 until November of 2013. The bays for Station 2 and 3 face Meeting Street and the two bays facing Wentworth house antique apparatus.

The statue of a dalmatian snoozing between doors 3 and 2 is a whimsical touch that brought a smile to my face.

Frank and I rested in our hotel room until the evening's welcome meeting for our Country Heritage Tour group. This post is long enough, I have covered a lot, and our tour had not even begun yet!