Landmarks of Charleston / Including Description of an Incomparable Stroll

by Thomas Petigru Lesesne

THE WASHINGTON HOUSE, 87 Church Street: President George Washington, visiting Charleston in May, 1791, was “domiciled” in the residence of Thomas Heyward, Jr., one of the four South Carolina Signers of the Declaration of Independence. Edward Rutledge, also a Signer of the Declaration, was of the company that greeted the soldier-statesman across the Cooper River and escorted him to town. A complete equipment was organized by the City of Charleston for the President’s comfort. The house has undergone changes. For some years a baker did business on the ground floor. The property is now owned and maintained by the Society for the Preservation of Old Dwellings. Down the street and on the opposite side at No. 78, President Washington addressed citizens from the balcony, which is a graceful reminder of the French influence in Charleston.

MYTHICAL OLD SLAVE MARKET, 6 Chalmers Street: Chalmers in this year is fairly famous for two things: It is Charleston’s surviving “cobble-stone” street, the stones coming in ballast from European shores in the old sailing days, and on it is a building that tourists are told was the old Slave Market. The myth has been exploded repeatedly, but it persists, and since there are no black slaves it probably doesn’t matter. Authorities are positive in saying that nowhere in Charleston was there a constituted slave market for the public auctioning of blacks from Africa. Several houses in this vicinity were used in olden times to quarter slaves who were to be sold on the block. Authorities also agree, propagandists to the contrary notwithstanding, that the black slaves in the South were in better care than were the peasantry in any other part of the world.

CHARLESTON LIBRARY, 164 King Street: Organized in 1748 by seventeen young gentlemen of Charlestown, third oldest in this country, the Charleston Library Society, a private enterprise governed by a Board of Trustees, moved into a new fireproof building in recent years. In 1835 the society bought the building of the old South Carolina Bank, at the northwest corner of Broad and Church Streets, using this until the transfer to King Street. The society has more than 60,000 volumes. It owns the only surviving file of the South Carolina State Gazette and one of three files of The Courier (1803). Valuable books were lost in the fire of 1778. In the War for Southern Independence most of the volumes were taken to Columbia for safekeeping; those left in the society’s building were destroyed. In 1874 the old Apprentices’ Society was merged with the Charleston Library Society. In 1900, dissolving, the South Carolina Jockey Club transferred its property to the library; the club and the society were about of an age. Generous bequests have greatly assisted the society.

CHARLESTON MUSEUM, 123 Rutledge Avenue: This, the oldest Museum in the country, is housed in the former Thomson Auditorium, built in 1899 for conventions, with money bequeathed by John Thomson. The Charlestown Museum was organized in 1773 and incorporated in 1915. Very fine collections of natural history and of the history of human culture are owned. Lately the Museum had the great good fortune to come into possession of the priceless collection of birds preserved by the distinguished South Carolina ornithologist, Arthur Trezevant Wayne. A skeleton of a large whale which found its way into Charleston harbor and was harpooned is one of the Museum’s unique specimens, unique in that the cetacean was caught in this harbor.

THE BATTERY, White Point Gardens: It is no use to call the Battery by its proper name; even in Charleston, White Point Gardens is not recognized as the Battery. Nonetheless the name of this famous and beautiful park and promenade is White Point Gardens. Its sea walls are laved on the south by the Ashley River and on the east by the Cooper River; their confluence is at and off the southeast corner of the Battery. This pleasure ground has been favorably compared with the world’s most famous plazas and promenades. It is a source of never-ending delight to visitors. East, or High Battery begins at the old Granville Bastion, now Omar Temple of the Mystic Shrine. It is a great promenade, with a commanding view of the harbor seaward, with Fort Sumter in the middle-ground. South Battery, proper, is between the East Battery and the extension of King Street to the water. Somewhat more than eight acres constitute South Battery, which, to the westward, becomes the Murray Boulevard, lined, as East and South Battery are, with fine residences. In its origin East Battery had a wall of palmetto logs with a plank walk on top. It was swept away in the great gale of 1804. William Crafts, Jr., originated the first stone wall, with rock ballast from incoming ships as “riprap” to strengthen the wall. The work was completed before 1820. In the War of 1812 guns were emplaced along East Battery, thus, it is held, accounting for its name, The Battery. Fort Broughton and Fort Mechanic have long since disappeared. Fort Street became South Bay Street and later South Battery for its whole length from East Battery through the Boulevard area to the junction with Tradd Street a mile away. It was in 1830 that the first steps toward creating a beautiful pleasure ground were taken. By 1852 White Point Gardens was an accomplished fact. Fine oak and palmetto trees enhance the attractiveness of the Battery. Years ago a bathhouse was removed. The monument to the defenders of Fort Moultrie, commonly called the Sergeant Jasper monument because of the figure of a soldier rescuing the flag, was unveiled June 28 (Carolina Day), 1876, the hundredth anniversary of the repulse of Sir Peter Parker’s British fleet. The monument to William Gilmore Simms, editor, author and historian, was erected in June, 1879. At the foot of Meeting Street is a memorial fountain to the men of the first submarine, Confederates. Facing Fort Sumter is a monument to the defenders of Fort Sumter. On the Battery are relics of all the wars Charleston has seen, the Spanish War being represented by the capstan of the battleship Maine, destroyed in Havana harbor in 1898. To visit Charleston and not to see the Battery is unthinkable. From time to time concerts are given in the band stand. The late Andrew B. Murray contributed generously to the improvement of the Battery and of the driveway named in his honor.

Trumbull’s Portrait of General George Washington, in the City Hall

THE COLONIAL COMMON, and Ashley River Embankment: In Charleston beautiful Colonial Lake is The Pond. It came into being in the 1880’s with the reclaiming of the area. The official designation is The Colonial Common and Ashley River Embankment. About this salt-water pond are garden areas, and west of it is the new Moultrie Playground which greatly improves the appearance of the neighborhood. Some of Charleston’s most desirable residences face the pond. Off its northwest corner is the Baker Sanatorium, one of the South’s largest and most completely equipped private hospitals, founded by Archibald E. Baker, surgeon. Less than fifty years ago there was a causeway at the head of Broad Street; nowadays the whole area is populated. Colonial Lake is bounded by Broad Street, Rutledge Avenue, Beaufain Street, and Ashley Avenue, paramount traffic arteries. Its water is from the Ashley River, regulated by a flood-gate.

MEDICAL COLLEGE, 16 Lucas Street: While the Medical College of the State of South Carolina dates from 1823, it did not move to the present site until 1913. For years before that it was in Queen Street. The college maintains schools of medicine, pharmacy and nursing. The News and Courier is quoted: “The early faculty included men of national and international reputation, who gave the college a prestige which placed it at once amongst the foremost institutions of the kind, and among its graduates were not a few whose fame added further luster to their alma mater.... The sessions of the college were carried on without intermission until the outbreak of the War Between the States when lectures had to be discontinued. In 1865 the college was reopened, and in spite of adverse conditions has been in successful operation ever since.” In the session of the Legislature in 1913 the college passed under State control.

THE ROPER HOSPITAL, 15 Lucas Street: On the site of the old City Hospital is the Roper Hospital; riverward is its auxiliary pavilion, the Riverside Infirmary, a high-class private hospital. The Roper is a general hospital operated by the Medical Society of South Carolina, the City of Charleston and the County of Charleston contributing to the care of “free” patients. The institution includes a special building for contagious diseases. The hospital owes its origin to the benevolence of Colonel Thomas Roper. In 1849 the Medical Society proceeded to arrange the building of a hospital, “prompted by the deficient and faulty hospital accommodations of the city at that time.” The City Council appropriated $20,000 and a lot was acquired at Queen and Mazyck Streets. Public spirited citizens swelled the building fund. The building was completed in 1852. Before it was completely furnished and equipped, it had to be opened because of the yellow fever epidemic that raged in 1852. In effect, the old Roper Hospital was leased to the City of Charleston, the arrangement between the Board of Trustees and the City Council beginning in 1856 and terminating in 1865. With the evacuation of Charleston by the Confederates, the Union invaders took it over; its trustees were impotent. Next to the Roper, the city improvised and operated its own hospital, and the Roper trustees closed their institution in 1871. The city hospital was virtually destroyed in the earthquake of 1886. The City Council had it transferred to Lucas Street. On this site the present Roper building was erected. It has been greatly enlarged in the last twenty years. Nurses’ homes are on the property, the student nurses being enrolled at the Medical College.