Between Two Rivers · Episode 5
The Holy City
After the Revolution, the new city of Charleston fills with steeples. George Washington's 1791 visit, the churches of Church and Meeting Streets, Beth Elohim and the beginning of Reform Judaism in America, the Library Society and the College of Charleston, and the single house with its piazza and privacy door.
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Carol Stand on the deck of a ship coming into Charleston harbor, any time in the last two hundred years, and look at the skyline. What do you see?
Shannon Steeples.
Carol Steeples. White ones, tall ones, a church tower on what feels like every other block. And that's the picture behind Charleston's nickname.
Shannon The Holy City.
Carol Welcome back to Between Two Rivers. A history of Charleston, one era at a time.
Shannon Last time, a palmetto fort beat the British navy, the British came back and took the city anyway, and Charles Town became Charleston. This time, the new American city fills up with churches, a synagogue, a college, and a very particular kind of house.
Carol Episode five. The Holy City.
Shannon So it's 1783. The war is over, the British are gone, and Charleston has a new name and a new city government.
Carol But it lost something, too.
Shannon It did. In 1786, the state decided to move its capital inland, to a brand-new town called Columbia, closer to the middle of the state. The government moved there a few years later.
Carol Charleston was not thrilled.
Shannon (laughs) Not thrilled. But it was still one of the biggest cities in the South, still the big port, and still where the money was.
Carol And it had a famous visitor.
Shannon George Washington. In May of 1791, on his tour of the Southern states, the president spent about a week in Charleston. Dinners, balls, a concert, a lot of toasts. He stayed in a house on Church Street.
Carol A house you can still visit.
Shannon Today it's called the Heyward-Washington House. Hold on to that one for the end.
Carol So, the Holy City. Where does the nickname come from?
Shannon Nobody knows who said it first. And it's actually a fairly modern nickname. The earliest uses we know of are from the early 1900s. Back in this era, people called Charleston the Palmetto City. But the usual explanation for Holy City is two things. The skyline full of steeples, and the long list of faiths that lived side by side in one small city.
Carol Which goes all the way back to episode one.
Shannon All the way back. The colony's founders promised religious toleration, to attract settlers. And people came. Anglicans, French Huguenots, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Quakers, Catholics, and Jewish families.
Carol So by the early 1800s, who had a church where?
Shannon Let's walk a few blocks. St. Michael's, from episode three, at Broad and Meeting. St. Philip's, a few blocks up Church Street, the city's oldest congregation. The French Huguenot Church, on Church and Queen. The Circular Congregational Church, on Meeting Street. And First Baptist, down on Church Street. That congregation goes back to 1682, and it's been in Charleston since the 1690s.
Carol That's a lot of steeples in a short walk.
Shannon That's why sailors used them to steer by. And the Catholics built St. Mary's, on Hasell Street, the first Catholic church in the Carolinas.
Carol And then there's Beth Elohim.
Shannon Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. It means Holy Congregation, House of God. It was founded in 1749.
Carol And Charleston had one of the biggest Jewish communities in the country.
Shannon Around 1800, the biggest. More Jewish people lived in Charleston than in New York. They came for the same reason as the Huguenots. A place where they could worship freely and do business.
Carol And they built a synagogue.
Shannon A grand one, finished in 1794, on Hasell Street. And in the 1820s, some of its members started something new. They wanted shorter services, some prayers in English, and a sermon people could understand.
Carol That sounds familiar.
Shannon It should. It's the beginning of Reform Judaism in America. It started right here in Charleston.
Carol Is that synagogue still standing?
Shannon Not the first one. It burned in a huge fire in 1838. But the congregation rebuilt right away, on the same spot. The building there today, with its tall white columns, was finished in 1841. It's the second-oldest synagogue building in the country, and the oldest one still in use.
Carol So that's faith. What about learning?
Shannon Charleston had a library before it had a college. The Charleston Library Society, founded in 1748 by a group of young men who wanted to order books from London.
Carol And it's still around.
Shannon Still around, still on King Street. It's one of the oldest libraries in the country.
Carol And the college?
Shannon The College of Charleston. Chartered in 1785. Three of its founders had signed the Declaration of Independence. Later on, the city took it over, and it became the first city-run college in the country.
Carol And that beautiful building with the columns?
Shannon Randolph Hall, built in the late 1820s. If you've ever seen a photo of the college, with the big oaks and the hanging moss, that's the one.
Carol Now, let's talk about houses. Because if you walk around downtown Charleston, you'll notice something odd.
Shannon The houses are sideways.
Carol They look sideways. The narrow end faces the street, and the long side runs back from it, along the lot.
Shannon That's the Charleston single house. Single, because it's just one room wide. Usually two rooms on each floor, with a hall and a staircase in the middle.
Carol Why build it like that?
Shannon Two reasons people usually give. The lots downtown were long and narrow. And the summers were hot. So along the long side of the house, they built porches, one on each floor.
Carol The piazzas.
Shannon In Charleston, you don't call it a porch. You call it a piazza. They usually face south or west, to catch the breeze off the water and shade the rooms from the sun.
Carol And then there's the door.
Shannon My favorite part. You walk up from the sidewalk and knock on what looks like the front door. But when you open it, you're not inside the house. You're on the piazza, outside. The real front door is halfway down.
Carol So the street door is really just a door to the porch.
Shannon It's a privacy door. And the story goes, if it was open, you were welcome. If it was shut, the family wasn't receiving visitors.
Carol And of course, there was another fire.
Shannon Of course. The fire of 1838, the one that took the synagogue, burned something like a thousand buildings. A huge part of the city.
Carol And they rebuilt.
Shannon They rebuilt. A lot of what you see downtown today went up after that fire, in the 1840s and 1850s. And St. Philip's, which had burned a few years earlier, in 1835, got a new church, and then that tall steeple, finished around 1850.
Carol So by the middle of the century, the skyline was all there.
Shannon The Holy City, the one sailors saw coming in. Most of it is still there.
Carol So, if you're in Charleston today, where do you find this episode?
Shannon Start at the Heyward-Washington House on Church Street, where George Washington stayed. Then walk north up Church Street. You'll pass the Huguenot Church, and St. Philip's, with its steeple standing right out in the middle of the street view.
Carol Then cut over to Hasell Street, to Beth Elohim. Look for the white columns. You can take a tour inside.
Shannon Then walk over to the College of Charleston, and stand in the Cistern Yard in front of Randolph Hall, under the oaks.
Carol And all along the way, count the single houses. Look for the doors that open onto the piazza.
Shannon Once you see them, you'll see them everywhere.
Carol That's Charleston in its first years as an American city. Steeples, a synagogue that helped change a religion, a library, a college, and houses turned sideways to catch the breeze.
Shannon The Holy City.
Carol Next time, it's 1860 and '61. Charleston leads the South out of the Union, and the first shots of the Civil War are fired over its harbor, at Fort Sumter.
Shannon First Shots. That's next time, on Between Two Rivers.