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Last updated: August 25. 2006 4:03PM
JOURNEYS
Charleston Rising
A Southern city once afraid of change, Charleston is now embracing a neo-Dixie renaissance, infusing youth, wealth and a stunning culture of rebirth.
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Once seated, we sip our wine and watch as the crowd doubles on the street. Dark-haired girls in razor-thin heels strut by, older couples slowly follow, arm in arm, and the sound of college students prepping for their nightly revelry echoes down the brick sidewalks. All this recalls Charleston’s Renaissance movement of the 1920s, when the city birthed jazz musicians, authors and even new-fangled social innovations such as the cocktail party and the Charleston dance.
It’s the same today all across Charleston: courtyard dining with great food, jazz music at corner bars and a wild energy pervading from the city.
And the night is only beginning.
With its Old World flair, a booming tourism base and a stunning culture of wealth and art, Charleston has the feel of a Paris or Amsterdam. And though its Southern sensibilities have kept it tame for years, it is emerging as a city of change. You feel it all around you. The downtown mixes regal hundred-year-old buildings and big-name retailers like Banana Republic and Urban Outfitters. Its Market District offers a youth-heavy dance-club atmosphere and a mecca for tourists who shop for gifts in an area that once served as a slave market.
And with the new $600 million, 575-foot-tall Cooper River Bridge as a backdrop, once-desolate parts of the city are following suit. Far north on King Street, a new district is rising for the tragically hip, offering tapas restaurants, nightly bands and funky shops. It’s this infusion that’s propelling Charleston forward at a pace many natives would rather halt.
“Charleston is experiencing an explosion of growth, and that’s a concern,” says Robert Marshall Gurley, assistant director of the Charleston Preservation Society. “The society and other people feel that development is occurring at too rapid of a pace. It could change the character of Charleston.”
It’s a balancing act in a city teetering between separate eras, where you actually see the past merge with the present. And though the city is looking ahead, the past is never far behind.
Charleston is one of those American cities forever defined by its history, a stunning example being Charles Towne Landing, the site of the first permanent English settlement in the Carolinas just up the Ashley River from downtown. Charles Towne is a trip back to 1670, with houses, vegetable gardens and animals that were native to the area in the 17th century. Or take a stroll or carriage ride through downtown for a heavy dose of the area’s Civil War past. And what a past it was.
In January 1861, cadets from South Carolina’s military institute, The Citadel, fired the first shots of the Civil War. Then, in April, Confederate soldiers dealt a huge blow to the Union when they fired continuously into the Charleston harbor and took Fort Sumter, one of the few Southern forts remaining in Federal hands after secession.
For most of the war, the Union Army would try to take the city, but Charleston was one of the leading ports for blockade runners, and Confederate protection was fierce. They held out until almost the very end. In February 1865, after a tenuous bombardment, Charleston would become one of the last cities to fall before the Union claimed victory. The four-year war all but ruined the prosperity of the antebellum city, and its reconstruction would continue for decades.
As commerce improved, residents worked to restore community institutions – and interracial relations. In 1867, Charleston’s first free secondary school for blacks was completed, a mere four years after the last slave auction had taken place at the Slave Mart on Chalmers Street. Years later, industry would become the driving force to bring Charleston and her inhabitants back from near devastation. The elaborately designed public building, the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, was finished in 1896, at long last heralding a move toward stability.
Not to be outdone by man-made disasters, the city also endured its share of natural ones. Twice, fires swept through at such strength the infrastructure was nearly destroyed. And what the fires couldn’t burn, an earthquake brought down in 1886. The quake, which measured 7.5 on the Richter Scale, damaged 2,000 buildings and caused millions of dollars in damage. More recently, Hurricane Hugo made landfall at Charleston in September 1989 with 138-mph winds and a 20-foot storm surge that flattened 30 downtown buildings, including homes along Rainbow Row bordering the Battery.
Still, despite its rocky past, the city has maintained a resilience that’s brought it back after each blow.
The sound of hooves click from behind us, heralding yet another horse-drawn carriage tour through the historic downtown streets. “It’s really grown over the last 10 years,” says Ginger Scully, who’s lived here during its expansion. “Tourists are fascinated with the history here and the beauty of these buildings that give the city a real sense of place and time.”
These, however, are no Disney World tourists. Charleston’s visitors come for the history, the architecture, the music and the arts, an example of which is the annual 17-day Spoleto Festival. The spring festival brings in renowned artists and emerging performers in opera, theater, jazz, dance and a host of visual disciplines. And it also ushers in thousands of visitors eager for a taste of the upscale arts and entertainment.
Of course, many come for the shopping alone. You’re as likely to find Manolo Blahniks as a vintage Nina Simmone vinyl. The main cache is around the City Market. Jemstone jewelry, nature photography and novelty T-shirts cover the open-air structure built 20 years before the Civil War. It offers a dizzying array of artistic creations mixed in with the ever-present typical tourist trinkets.
At the market and elsewhere in the city, Gullah women weave and sell their sweetgrass baskets, a craft perfected by the islanders off the South Carolina coast. Gullah, the language of black maids and nannies, is a hybridized version of Southern Creole infused with African dialects.
We pause and watch one woman bent intently over her craft, wrapped in a pink, orange and purple shawl, seemingly oblivious to the heat – but not to a sale. “Come heeer,” she says, waving a calloused hand to her wares, priced at a few hundred dollars for some of the larger ones. “Bah sumtin.”
And why not? The city is drenched in wealth – artistic wealth, cultural wealth and especially architectural wealth. Today, grand homes are upstaged by even grander churches, which give Charleston one of its nicknames, The Holy City. From its beginnings as Charles Towne, named by colonists honoring England’s King Charles II, there’s also the nickname “Little London,” so named for how the colonists laid out the city – in a series of boulevards reflecting the British Grand Modell plan.
Because of this, the city is easily navigable by foot, a journey rewarded with cobblestone roads, gnarled live oaks and Gone With The Wind-style homes and mansions. Most of these grand houses were built by slaves in a wildly stunning array of architectural styles: Federal, Colonial, Italianate, Georgian, Victorian, all rigorously protected by law since the 1930s. The wrought-iron fences and gates set Charleston apart from other Southern cities. The master behind the most exquisite of these, Phillip Simmons, epitomizes the African-American folk influence on the city and reflects a melting pot of cultures and dialogue that began shortly after the Civil War.
Today’s “Northern occupators,” as transplants are often called behind closed doors, began their invasion into Charleston in the 1980s. After Hurricane Hugo hit, insurance money helped fuel what was called the first great real estate boom, and everyone got in – including Yankees. Though many old families had tried to hold on to their estates, not all the mansions today remain in lineages. Some of the homes are now owned by Northerners who were more than eager to ride the real estate wave. In turn, these Yankees are helping to contribute to the area’s rapid development.
The result is a new Charleston Renaissance that’s brought about a burgeoning tourism-based economy. So while not every native Charlestonian may appreciate the influx of silver-haired tour groups and a venerable parade of camera flashes outside their homes, the crowds are helping to retain Charleston’s historic past and ensure its future.
The night is still young, and the music continues, fast and furious. This is the way of Charleston. A small city that thinks big. It’s a place where Southern sensibility has made enough room for change, something the South typically avoids.
Of course, maybe Charleston hasn’t really changed. Residents like to say the city stays the same and the people change. But walking down King Street or visiting the downtown on a Saturday evening, you can see what even the Battery’s walls couldn’t hold back.
But motion is relative. To this city-in-flux, perhaps it’s the rest of the South that has changed, simply by standing still.
Upcoming events not to miss
SEPTEMBER 2006
Saturdays in September: Rice Walks at Middleton Place
11 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Middleton Place, 4300 Ashley River Road. Take a guided tour to the
Garden Rice Field to learn how the slaves planted, maintained and harvested Carolina Gold rice. www.middletonplace.org.
Sept. 9: Coastal Culture Day
11 a.m.-2 p.m., S.C. Aquarium on Charleston Harbor, 100 Aquarium Wharf. Highlights include Gullah storytellers, local basket weavers and rice cultivation demonstrations. www.scaquarium.org.
Sept. 15-16: Charleston Music & Heritage Festival (Chazz Fest)
At the Family Circle Tennis Center, Daniel Island. Featured Artists Festival will showcase music, food and art history of Charleston and the Carolinas. Musicians include Al Green, Buddy Guy, Soul Rebels Brass Band, The Drifters featuring Bennie Anderson, The Catalinas, Drink Small and the Plantation Singers. www.chazzfest.com.
Sept. 17: Shrimpin’
& Shaggin’ Festival
11 a.m.-5 p.m., Charleston Maritime Center, 10 Wharfside St. Shrimpin’ & Shaggin’ combines two of the Lowcountry’s most loved traditions – eating local shrimp dishes and dancing to favorite shag tunes from the Embers, the Fantastic Shakers and other bands. www.charlestonnace.net.
Sept. 17: 35th Annual Scottish Games and Highland Gathering
At the Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant. Presented by
Scottish Society of Charleston. Learn about Scottish athletics,
piping and drumming, highland dancing, Scottish dancing and fiddling. (843) 529-1020 or
www.charlestonscots.com
Sept. 29-Oct. 8: Moja Arts Festival
Ten-day multidisciplinary arts celebration (Moja is a Swahili word meaning ‘One’) highlighting African-American and Caribbean contributions to western and world cultures. Includes visual arts, dance, concerts, theater, children’s activities, crafts, ethnic food.
www.mojafestival.com.
OCTOBER
Oct. 1: Festival Hispano
Noon-7 p.m., live Latin music, authentic foods and craft items, North Charleston Wannamaker County Park. www.ccprc.com.
Oct. 5: Southern Living Cook-Off
The largest annual cook-off in America, with a $100,000 grand prize. Finalists prepare their dishes on stage at Gaillard Municipal Auditorium, 77 Calhoun St.
www.southernliving.com.
Oct. 6: French Quarter Art Walk
Visit 30 galleries and meet with artists. French Quarter is between South Market, Tradd and Meeting streets to the waterfront past East Bay. www.frenchquarterarts.com.
Oct. 8: Taste of Charleston
11 a.m.-5 p.m. at Boone Hall Plantation. The best restaurants in Charleston offer house specialties
in bite-size portions. www.charlestonrestaurantassociation.com/tasteofcharleston.html.
Oct. 20-22: Fantasy in the Garden
9:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Middleton Place, 4300 Ashley River Road. This year’s theme, Gardening with Wit and Wisdom. www.middletonplace.org.
Oct. 29: Summerville Ghost Walk and Harvest Moon Hayride
6-9 p.m. at Town Square. Hayrides wind through darkened streets and riders are entertained by music and stories. www.summervilletourism.com.
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