Homes of History: Our Walking Tour of Charleston

Homes of History: Our Walking Tour of Charleston

Now I know why people love Charleston.

After breakfast on Friday morning, Jason and I strolled across the street to the Visitor’s Center. Rather than shuffle pamphlets, we decided to talk to the folks there and see what ticket packages they had to help us best spend our time here. The decision was easy – the Heritage Pass, two days to visit key museum homes, the Gibbes Art Museum and The Charleston Museum. Our only concern was would we actually be able to do it all.

We planned to visit the five tourable homes on Friday and save the plantations – Drayton Hall and Middleton Place, for Saturday.  With passes and map in hand, we boarded the trolley and headed downtown.

View from the Edmondston-Alston house
second floor piazza 

Our first stop was the Edmondston-Alston house, built in 1825 by Charles Edmondston, a successful Charleston merchant.  It is located on what is known as the High Battery, a row of magnificent antebellum homes with a front row view of Charleston harbor. Unfortunately, the same piazzas that offer stunning views of the harbor also offered unobstructed views of the bombardment of Fort Sumter.

The Panic of 1837 depleted Edmondston’s financial resources and he was forced to sell his beautiful home. Charles Alston, one of the wealthiest rice planters in the Low Country, purchased it in 1838. He made several renovations to the home, including a third floor piazza, to reflect the popular Greek Revival style. Like others of the wealthy planter class, the Charleston home was Alston’s urban plantation, a place to bring his family, and of course, their enslaved servants, to escape the heat of the summers and enjoy the city’s social season.  Alston would receive business guests on the first floor, but the entertaining would be done on the second floor, above the noise and smells of the street.

The home survived the Civil War, the earthquake of 1886 and numerous hurricanes, including Hugo in 1989, and has remained in the Alston family since 1838.

The Heyward-Washington House

The Heyward-Washington house, second on our route, is a double brick home (another term for the Georgian center hall style) inside the walls of the original city, known as The Grand Modell.

The structure was built in 1772 by Daniel Heyward, one of South Carolina’s wealthy rice planters, as a town home for his son, Thomas.  Thomas Heyward was a man of prestige and influence in South Carolina. He was a Revolutionary patriot and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The house, which was used by General George Washington while he was in South Carolina for week in May 1791, was opened as Charleston’s first historic house museum in 1930.

Our guide, Beverly, had a drawl as sweet as honey and a genuine gentility that personified southern hospitality. I could have listened to her all day long. She told us about the priceless furniture in the home and the preserved outbuildings on the site, including the kitchen building, built in 1740.

The Nathaniel Russell home

Nathaniel Russell’s home, a grand Federal style townhouse on Meeting Street, was built in 1808. It is well known for its grandeur and its “flying staircase”, a spiral staircase that winds to the third floor seemingly untethered to anything. Unlike Heyward and Alston, Nathaniel Russell was not born in the south and was not a rice planter. He was born in Rhode Island and came to Charleston at the age of 27 as an agent for Providence merchants. In 1788, Russell married heiress Sarah Hopton. He was fifty; she thirty-six. They lived in the home with their two daughters, Alicia and Sarah, and over time, their husbands and grandchildren.

The home remained with the Russell family until 1857, when Sarah, who inherited it from her mother after her death, sold it to South Carolina Governor R.W. Allston. The home, like the Heyward-Washington house, was eventually purchased by the Historic Charleston Foundation and helped lead the preservation movement in the city.

The Joseph Manigault house

Gabriel Manigault designed the Manigault home, a three-story brick townhouse, for his brother, Joseph. Like other homes in the Historic District, the Manigault house, with its high ceilings, ornamental plaster, numerous windows and curving central staircase, is reflective of the lifestyle enjoyed by wealthy rice planters of the era.

The home was built in 1803, but by the early 1920’s, stood close to ruin.  Recognizing the historical significance of the home, two Charleston women purchased it and established The Society for the Preservation of Old Dwellings to help keep it from destruction. With funds donated by Mrs. Henrietta Politzer, widow of Edward Hartford, heir to the A&P fortune, the home was purchased by the Charleston Museum and opened as a historic house museum in 1949.

Our guide, Rosemary, was a wonderful woman who knew so much about the family, the home and their history. Her excellent imageries and descriptions brought the people and the home to life for us.

Finally, we went to the Aiken-Rhett house, one of the most stunning examples of an intact mansion and outbuildings in the historic district. A brick wall surrounds the work yard, the domain of the slaves who supported the household and its families; the two–story laundry kitchen building, privy and stable remain standing. It’s an excellent opportunity to see where some of the slaves lived and worked on this urban plantation.

Aiken-Rhett House piazza

The home was built by John Robinson, a shipping merchant, in the typical style of the day – a center hall with two rooms on either side. After losing 5 shops at sea, Robinson was forced to sell the home, and in 1827, it became the property of William Aiken, an Irish immigrant who had amassed a huge fortune. When he died in a carriage accident, the home passed to his widow and son, William Aiken, Jr., a successful rice planter, politician and eventual Governor of South Carolina. Aiken expanded in the 1830’s and again in the 1850’s.  The three-story home, with beautiful and spacious piazzas on its first two floors, was one of the most impressive in Charleston.

After the deaths of Aiken and his wife, the home became the property of their daughter, Henrietta and her husband, Major A.B. Rhett.  Aiken family descendants continued to live in the home until the 1975 when it was donated to The Charleston Museum, however little was done in the way of alterations or changes.

Sadly, the Aiken-Rhett house sustained extensive damage as a result of Hurricane Hugo. The home, as we were told, is being kept in conservatorship, rather than being restored.

Even in the Aiken-Rhett house, it was easy to imagine the lives of the gentry who lived in these magnificent structures. I had whet my appetite for Saturday's sojourn to Drayton Hall and Middleton Place.