Between Two Rivers · Episode 9
Saving Charleston
The Charleston becomes the dance of the Roaring Twenties, while the old city is being sold off room by room. Susan Pringle Frost and the first preservation society, America's first protected historic district in 1931, Rainbow Row, and Porgy and Bess.
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Carol New York City, 1923. A Broadway show called Runnin' Wild. And in the middle of it, a song with a beat so catchy that the whole audience starts stamping their feet.
Shannon The song is called The Charleston.
Carol And within a couple of years, people all over America and Europe are doing the dance. Kicking their heels, swinging their arms. The Charleston becomes the dance of the Roaring Twenties.
Shannon Named after a city that, at the time, felt like it was stuck in the past.
Carol Welcome back to Between Two Rivers. A history of Charleston, one era at a time.
Shannon Last time, the great earthquake of 1886 shook the city, and iron bolts held the old houses together. This time, a new century, a new dance, and a fight over whether the old city would survive at all.
Carol Episode nine. Saving Charleston.
Shannon So, Charleston around 1900. It's not the rich city it was before the war. Rice planting is dying out. The phosphate boom is fading. Other Southern cities, like Atlanta, are growing fast.
Carol And Charleston isn't.
Shannon Charleston isn't. There's an old Charleston saying from those hard years. The city was too poor to paint, and too proud to whitewash.
Carol I love that.
Shannon And there's a second half to the story. Because nobody had money to tear the old houses down and put up new ones, a lot of them just stayed. Shabby, peeling, sometimes falling apart. But still standing.
Carol So being poor saved the old city.
Shannon In a way. And then the new century brought some changes. The Navy opened a big shipyard up the Cooper River in the early 1900s. That brought jobs.
Carol So where did the Charleston dance actually come from?
Shannon The steps grew up in the Black communities of the South, and some of them are said to have come from right here, around the Charleston docks and the Sea Islands. The Broadway song was written by a pianist named James P. Johnson, who said he'd picked up the rhythms from dockworkers from around Charleston he'd played for in New York.
Carol And there's the orphanage band.
Shannon The Jenkins Orphanage Band. A Charleston minister, the Reverend Daniel Jenkins, started an orphanage in the 1890s, and he taught the children to play brass instruments. The band played on Charleston street corners, and then toured the country, and even went to London.
Carol And people saw those kids dancing while they played.
Shannon That's the story. A lot of people believe the band helped carry those steps out into the world. Several famous jazz musicians got their start in that band.
Carol Now, the old houses. Because in the 1920s, people started noticing them again.
Shannon Rich visitors from the North started coming down. And some of them liked the old woodwork so much, they bought it.
Carol Bought it?
Shannon Whole rooms. Mantels, paneling, staircases, iron gates. Pulled out of Charleston houses, packed up, and shipped off. Some ended up in museums in other cities.
Carol That's heartbreaking.
Shannon It was. And at the same time, gas stations were going up where old houses had stood. And one woman decided she'd had enough.
Carol Susan Pringle Frost.
Shannon She was from an old Charleston family that had lost most of its money. She worked as a stenographer, and then went into real estate, which was very unusual for a woman then.
Carol And she bought old houses.
Shannon She bought old houses, fixed them up, and sold them, usually to people who promised to take care of them. She was also fighting for women's right to vote at the same time.
Carol A busy woman.
Shannon A very busy woman. In 1920, she heard that the Joseph Manigault House, a beautiful old house on Meeting Street, was going to be torn down. So she and a group of neighbors called a meeting.
Carol And that meeting was?
Shannon The start of the Society for the Preservation of Old Dwellings. Today it's called the Preservation Society of Charleston, and it's still going.
Carol Did they save the Manigault House?
Shannon Eventually, yes. It took years, and a lot of help, but it was saved. You can tour it today.
Carol And then, in 1931, the big one.
Shannon The big one. The city passed a zoning law that drew a line around the oldest part of town, mostly south of Broad Street, and called it the Old and Historic District.
Carol And inside that line?
Shannon You couldn't just change the outside of an old building however you wanted. A new board had to look at the plans first. The Board of Architectural Review.
Carol Was that new?
Shannon Brand new. Charleston was the first city in America to protect a historic district by law. A lot of other cities copied the idea later. New Orleans, Savannah, and many more.
Carol Savannah! (laughs) Our sister show.
Shannon (laughs) Our sister show.
Carol And this is also when Rainbow Row got its colors.
Shannon It is. In 1931, a woman named Dorothy Legge bought one of the run-down old houses on East Bay Street and painted it a soft Caribbean pink. Her neighbors followed with their own colors. And now it's one of the most photographed spots in Charleston.
Carol And then there's Porgy.
Shannon A Charleston writer named DuBose Heyward wrote a novel in 1925 called Porgy, set in a crowded old building he called Catfish Row. It was based on a real place on Church Street, called Cabbage Row.
Carol And it became an opera.
Shannon George Gershwin read it, loved it, and came down to spend a summer on Folly Beach, just outside Charleston, to work on the music. And in 1935, Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway.
Carol Summertime.
Shannon Summertime. The words came from DuBose Heyward, a Charleston man, writing about Charleston.
Carol So, if you're in Charleston today, where do you find this episode?
Shannon Walk down East Bay Street to Rainbow Row, and count the colors.
Carol Then go over to Church Street, near the corner of Tradd, and find Cabbage Row, the real place behind Catfish Row.
Shannon And then go up Meeting Street to the Joseph Manigault House, right by the Charleston Museum, and take the tour. The house that started it all.
Carol And everywhere you walk south of Broad, remember. All of this is still here because of a law passed in 1931, and a woman who started buying old houses before anyone else thought they were worth saving.
Carol That's Charleston in the first half of the twentieth century. A famous dance, a stubborn preservationist, the first protected historic district in America, Rainbow Row, and Porgy and Bess.
Shannon The city that saved itself.
Carol Next time, it's our last episode. Hurricane Hugo, the Spoleto Festival, the big new bridge, and Charleston today.
Shannon Between Two Rivers. That's next time, on Between Two Rivers.