Landmarks of Charleston / Including Description of an Incomparable Stroll

by Thomas Petigru Lesesne

MAGNOLIA GARDENS, on the Ashley River: Distinguished authors have heaped glowing compliments on the enchantment that is Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, “a sight unrivalled,” said a writer in the Chicago Tribune. The fame of these gardens has gone wide and far. Thomas P. Lesesne, of Charleston, was in the great Kew Gardens, London. Coming to the azalea section he was surprised to find a sign declaring to all who came that way that if one would see the azalea in the zenith of its beauty, he should visit Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, near Charleston, South Carolina, United States of America! In Kew! Think of that! John Galsworthy, Owen Wister and other notables have shed superlatives in describing the gardens. In this show place on the Ashley River, the Reverend John Grimke Drayton planted the first Azalea Indica. They had been imported from the East to Philadelphia in 1843, but, the Pennsylvania climate being too rigorous for them, Mr. Drayton was invited to see what he could do with them. And what he has done with them brings thousands of people from distant places each spring when the azaleas are in the full glory of their bloom! The gardens, about twenty-five acres in extent, have what is declared to be the most valuable collection of the Camellia Japonica; there are more than 250 varieties. They come into bloom in the winter, and the gardens are open for their inspection. Carlisle Norwood Hastie, present owner of Magnolia, is grandson of the Reverend Mr. Drayton, an Episcopalian minister. Two hundred years the property has been in possession of the Drayton family. During the Revolution the Colonial mansion was burned and a second building was burned during the War for Southern Independence. Mr. Hastie has purchased the old Tupper house in Charleston (its site on Meeting Street) for rëerection at Magnolia-on-Ashley. Moss-covered oak and cypress trees, bordering mirroring lagoons, furnish a bewitching background for the gardens, with the Ashley River in front.

ASHLEY RIVER BRIDGE, on the Coastal Highway (17): Until the first of July, 1921, the bridge over the Ashley River at the head of Spring Street was privately owned. At that time the county of Charleston acquired it by purchase and at once the toll was taken off. In the spring of 1926, the present handsome and commodious concrete bridge was formally opened. It is slightly down-stream from the rather ramshackle wooden bridge. It cost a million and a quarter dollars. It is wide enough for four vehicles abreast and on each side is a sidewalk for pedestrians. Its huge bascule leaves provide plenty of clearance for the greatest seagoing vessels. This bridge, a memorial to Charleston soldiers who lost their lives in the World War, is an essential link in the Coastal Highway between the provinces of eastern Canada and the keys of Florida, thence by “ferry” to Havana, Cuba. It connects the city of Charleston with all the trans-Ashley region. From the town it leads to James Island (on which are the Country Club and the Municipal Links, Riverland Terrace and Wappoo Hall) and the popular Folly Beach; by way of James Island to the Stono River bridge which is near the famous Fenwick Hall, a great estate in pre-Revolutionary years; it leads to Walterboro, Beaufort, Port Royal (site of the earliest French colony) and Savannah and Jacksonville; it leads to the Ashley River Road for St. Andrew’s Church, Middleton Place, Magnolia-on-the-Ashley, Drayton Hall, Runnymede, Wragg Barony and Bacon’s Bridge over the upper Ashley River. In the War Between the States the old bridge was burned and after Appomattox more than fifteen years elapsed before it was restored. Near the Ashley River Bridge in St. Andrew’s Parish are sites of the earliest English plantations. Quite near it Eliza Lucas, daughter of the Governor of Antigua and mother of the Generals Charles Cotesworth and Thomas Pinckney, carried forward her indigo experiments. David Ramsay says that the indigo planters doubled their capital every three or four years.

COOPER RIVER BRIDGE, on the Old King’s Highway: Coming to Charleston President George Washington, President James Monroe and the Marquis de Lafayette traveled over the old King’s Highway. Washington was here in 1791, Monroe in 1819 and Lafayette in 1825. From the Mount Pleasant shore to the City of Charleston they crossed by primitive ferry. To August of 1929 ferries over the broad Cooper River were continued. In that month the great bridge over the Cooper River was opened to traffic. This is the world’s third highest vehicular bridge! Its span over Town Creek affords vertical clearance of 132 feet, as much as that of the famous Brooklyn Bridge, and the span over the Cooper River a vertical clearance of 152 feet at mean high water. From the crest of this engineering achievement are provided commanding views. In the distance to the right is Fort Sumter, looking for all the world like a toy fortress in a toy pool. From this coign of vantage one sees the many bold and little creeks that flow into the Cooper. To the middle left one sees the heavy woods of Christ Church Parish. Give the imagination rein and appear ghosts of almost naked Indians, of early English, French, Irish, Scotch; of bitter conflicts of man against man; of Sir Peter Parker and his naval armada smiting the little palmetto fort with shot and shell. At Charleston, over the Cooper River Bridge the old Kings Highway makes junction with the Coastal Highway. It is the short route from Charleston to Georgetown, Wilmington, Norfolk, crossing the lower Santee and other bold coastal streams almost within sight of the sea. There is every promise that the old King’s Highway, paved, will develop into a paramount route between East and Southeast, an important alternate to the Coastal Highway. No visitor to Charleston should forego the opportunity of passing over the three-mile Cooper River Bridge. It is a sensation well worth the trivial Journey.

THE CITADEL, the Military College of South Carolina: General Charles Pelot Summerall is now a Charlestonian and proud of it. He would add that his pride is the greater in that he is president of The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, an institution whose illustrious record goes back to 1842, which furnished distinguished officers for the Confederacy, in the Spanish and World Wars. As the Cadet Battalion went into the Confederate service the college was closed in 1864. From the evacuation of Charleston to The Citadel’s reopening in 1882, it was occupied by Union soldiers. From its establishment in 1842 to the fall of 1922, The Citadel was on Marion Square. Because it needed more room, it went into new quarters at Hampton Park on the Ashley River where now it is. It was a cadet battery that fired the first gun of the War for Southern Independence; the Union ship Star of the West was driven off while attempting to bring supplies to the garrison besieged in Fort Sumter. Year after year the War Department of the United States designates The Citadel as a distinguished military college. Its academic standards are high.

PORTER MILITARY ACADEMY, Distinguished Military School: “Through the noble efforts” of the Reverend Anthony Toomer Porter, D.D., then Rector of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion, the Porter Military Academy had its origin in 1867 as the Holy Communion Church Institute, in its genesis “a classical school for the children of parents in straitened circumstances,” due to the War for Southern Independence. In Dr. Porter’s absence his board of trustees named the institution for him. Among its distinguished alumni is General Charles Pelot Summerall, former Chief of Staff of the United States Army and now President of The Citadel. The Porter Military Academy occupies the grounds of the United States Arsenal; it is bounded by Ashley Avenue and Bee, President and Doughty Streets. It continues to earn a high place among Southern educational institutions, its boarding cadets coming from many States. It is a fully accredited preparatory school.

COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON, Oldest Municipal College: To claim the distinction of being America’s oldest municipal college is a large order, but the College of Charleston, on George Street between St. Philip and College Streets, earns it by the record. The institution was founded in 1770 and takes rank as fifteenth in the list of American colleges. Its roll of graduates sounds like a list of South Carolina’s illustrious: John C. Fremont, explorer and candidate for the presidency; James B. DeBow, ante-bellum economist; Edward McCrady, historian; Bishop William Wightman, of the Methodist Episcopal Church; Bishop Bowen, of the Protestant Episcopal Church; William H. Trescott, diplomat; Paul Hamilton Hayne, poet; Chancellor Henry Deas Lesesne; United States Judge Henry A. M. Smith, historian and scholar; the Rev. J. L. Girardeau, eminent Presbyterian minister. On its governing board have served such distinguished men as James Louis Petigru, Robert Young Hayne, John Julius Pringle, Daniel Elliott Huger, Langdon Cheves, Henry Middleton, General William Washington, Joel Roberts Poinsett, Judge Mitchell King. In 1837 the college was taken over by the Corporation of Charleston; it is the oldest municipal college in America. Among the founders of the College of Charleston were the ablest men in the Royal Province of South Carolina, among them two Signers of the Declaration of Independence (Arthur Middleton and Thomas Heyward, Jr.) and three Signers of the Constitution of the United States (Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and John Rutledge, “The Dictator”).

St. Mary’s, 79 Hasell Street; Mother Parish of Catholics in Carolinas and Georgia

ORIGINAL DEPARTMENT STORE, King Street at Market: “Ghosts rush out every time I pass,” said a friend. He was growing sentimental about the Academy of Music building, razed in 1937. In 1830 in this “whale of a building,” for its time, was opened the world’s first department store. With great stocks from all parts of the world the Kerrisons built up an enormous business, their customers coming from as far as the Mississippi River! It was a massive building of massive construction. Its masonry was notable and it may be that its great heart cypress timbers were more notable. To the coming of the War for Southern Independence, Charleston being capital of a far-flung slave empire, business in the building prospered. Kerrison’s of this time is descendant of the original Kerrison’s; it is across and higher up King Street, one of the leading department stores of the South. After Appomattox Charleston was without a theater. The Charleston Theater had been destroyed in the fire of 1861. John Chadwick, a school master, acquired the building and converted the rear portion into a theater, the Academy of Music, wherein have appeared famous actors, actresses and singers, great bands and orchestras. Georges Barrere, solo flautist and conductor of the Little Symphony Orchestra and the Barrere Ensemble, after playing his flute on the stage, remarked: “Here is a veritable ‘Strad.’ of a theater!” Barrere was justly complimenting the remarkable acoustics of the theater. It is well to bear in mind that Charleston had a great department store before the first of the steam railroads began operation in America! A century ago in a mezzanine gallery on the top floor were displayed laces, embroideries and other fine goods from the world’s finest makers. As a theater the Academy of Music was owned for some years by John A. Owens, nationally known for his portrayal of Solon Shingle. It may be permissible here to say that Joseph Jefferson used to manage a theater in Charleston, that his mother was born in Charleston.

WASHINGTON SQUARE, Called also City Hall Park: In the northwest corner of this park is the first fireproof building built in America, for which salient reason Charleston knows it as The Fireproof Building. It was erected about 1826. Robert Mills was the architect. It is used for county offices and records. In the southwest corner is the City Hall which is discussed elsewhere. On Broad, Meeting and Chalmers Streets are handsome wrought-iron gates and wrought-iron railings of great grace. In the center of the park is a shaft of granite to the three companies of the Washington Light Infantry which served the Confederacy valiantly on the battlefields of Virginia in the 60’s, and in the defense of Charleston. Southward of this is a bust to the lilting Carolina poet, Henry Timrod, and eastward a monument to General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, for some time in the War for Southern Independence, commanding officer at Charleston. New Orleans paid tribute to this illustrious soldier long after Charleston had done so. Near the west gate is the statue of William Pitt.