Charleston, Part 3

Nope, not done yet with the vacation stories and photos.

Jeff and I really enjoyed our walking tour, but we also wanted to spend some time on our own, rambling around the lower peninsula of Charleston. There are so many beautiful houses and gardens and fences and gates, you just can't take it all in while traveling in a car.

I have some foot and leg problems, and by the end of our walking days, I was in a good bit of pain, but even so, it was well worth it to have that time with Jeff. No distractions. No schedule.

One of my favorite memories from the whole trip was sitting with Jeff on a bench at Washington Square Park just watching the people go by. We have such a shorthand about people watching that we don't usually have to say anything. We just look at each other and usually start giggling.

Those moments are the fun ones. And the ones that mean the most when you look back on a trip.

Several old houses in the historic area are open for tours, so we chose one I hadn't been in before - the Nathaniel Russell House. (Here's more information: https://www.historiccharleston.org/Russell.aspx)

The house's main attraction is a three-story cantilevered (or free-flying) staircase. (And of course you can't take pictures inside the house, or I'd be able to show you what we saw.)

Russell liked geometry, so when he built his house in the late 1700s, he made the front rooms (the entryway and his study on the first floor and the keeping room on the second floor) as rectangles, the middle rooms as ovals (the dining room) and the back rooms as squares (bedrooms). Not all the rooms are on the tour, but supposedly, there are two oval rooms and several others that we didn't get to see. They're still in the process of restoring the house. They're taking it one room at a time, and they're doing it right.

When the Russells lived there, all guests would've been greeted in the entryway. Business people would have remained in the entryway or the study until their business was complete. Any relatives or friends of the family would've been moved into the next room, which holds the grand staircase.

At that time, the streets would've been pretty disgusting (horse and even human waste, mud, etc.), so the nicer gathering rooms in the house were on the second floor. That would get them away from the stench of the streets and also give them better breezes from the harbor. So we had to go upstairs to see the dining room and what we'd now call the living room.

The dining room was turquoise. If you're like me, when someone says "Federalist," you think slate blue, hunter green, burgundy, etc., but after tons of research and recovery work done with dental tools, the colors they discovered in the house were nowhere near what I thought you'd find in a home at that time. The master bedroom was Granny Smith Apple green. The music room was pink with burgundy, blue and yellow on the carved plaster cornicework. The hallway that held the staircase was mustard yellow. The keeping room (or living room) was bright blue.

The walls in the dining room were covered in wallpaper with trompe l'oeil trim (a paint effect that is sort of an optical illusion). In those days, squares of wallpaper were pasted together into strips, then pasted onto the wall. THEN it was painted. I was confused because I thought the whole point of wallpaper was NOT to paint. Apparently, that was not the case in those days.

Guests would have a large meal in early evening, then the men would go downstairs to smoke and drink, and the ladies would adjourn to the keeping room for tea and sweets. The Russells were very wealthy, and one sign of that was a small square table made specifically to hold the tea urn. Back then, furniture always had more than one purpose, so if you have a piece that only had one job, it was seen as a sign of affluence.

I can't describe the carvings and moldings in the rooms well enough to do them justice. The window frames and crown moldings both were especially intricate. And the research they did to figure out the original colors of everything was amazing.

Both daughters lived in the house with their husbands, and when one of the sons-in-law was away on a trip, he wrote a letter to his wife talking about how he missed even the little things, like the light shining on the gold-gilded columns in the keeping room. The historians didn't know until they read that letter that the columns that were painted all white when they bought the house had actually been partially gold-gilded. They read diaries and letters and did art-gallery type restorations.

That keeping room was probably my favorite room in the house, followed closely by the music room. The whole room was oval-shaped. They even made the doors curved, so when they were closed, they completed the shape. They had some old musical instruments, which of course appealed to me. They also had this beautiful fainting couch that was way too fancy to actually sit on.

Nathaniel Russell was about 50 when he got married. His wife was in her early 30s. Nathaniel was rich, but his wife had money, too, before they met. I was very impressed to hear that she had a contract drafted that was essentially a pre-nuptial agreement, saying that if anything should happen to them, she would take with her anything she brought in - meaning that no matter what happened, she'd be taken care of. This was 1788! And this woman asked for and got a prenup. Good for her, I say!

I am freakish about how much I remember from these tours, and I haven't even said anything about their bedroom, how the stairs were constructed, the slaves quarters or the gardens!

We saw lots of pretty houses as we walked around, and of course, I had my camera in hand.

Jeff outside the Nathaniel Russell House.

Having his initials made into the railings was
another sign of how rich Nathaniel Russell was.

A lot of Europeans who moved to Charleston didn't like the looks of brick.
They thought it looked too primitive. So they framed their houses in wood, covered them in brick, then covered them in stucco to give them a more European look.

That's St. Michael's church. It has beautiful carved wood half-walls
that separate the seating areas. Back then, instead of pews,
churches sold little walled-off sections, and families had to bring their own
chairs. The closer to the front you were, the more money you had.

I've heard this told and refuted so many times, I'm not sure if it's
true or not, but supposedly, a lot of homes had two-sided staircases
at their front doors. Men went down one side and ladies went down
the other. That way, there was no chance of any of the men catching
a glimpse of the ladies' ankles as they walked down the steps.

Another shot of St. Michael's with palmetto trees.

This is a city business building, like where you go
to pay bills and stuff. It seems to pretty for that.

The gate around Washington Square Park. Imagine sitting
on the porch of that yellow house with the park as your view.

A palmetto tree. It's the one that's on the S.C. state flag.

That red brick building used to be a warehouse for
cotton or rice or indigo. Now, it's an office building.

This is a live oak tree. The park near the harbor is full of them.
Those long branches meet up with each other to make great shade.

This fountain is at Waterfront Park. And even as afraid
of water as I am, I didn't feel the need for a lifeguard.

The top of the fountain is a
pineapple - a symbol of hospitality.

A walkway covered by live oak trees at Waterfront Park.

Another fountain at Waterfront Park.

I call this my postcard shot. That bird couldn't have flown over at a better time.

This beautiful bridge connects Charleston and Mt. Pleasant.

So much for Southern hospitality.

A living wall surrounds the garden at one house.

The jasmine was in full bloom and smelled heavenly!

Believe it or not, this house is about 27,000 square feet.
The front door has glass inserts that are Tiffany crystal.

I love how they train greenery to fit around
stair rails, doorways and windows.

This house was P.G.T. Beauregard's headquarters. He was in
command of the garrison that shelled Fort Sumter during the Civil War.

A dentist built this house. The story goes that
he painted it the color of healthy gums.

I love the details like the rope trim around the
door and the checkerboard marble stoop.

I have wanted this house since I was a kid, so Jeff took a picture of my car in front of it. That's the closest I'll ever get! This house faces Charleston Harbor and the side with the small black balconies faces the Cooper River. The cannon you see would've been one of many that sat around the edge of what is now a pretty park. The park is the end of the peninsula and would've been the first line of defense. It's said that the people who owned these houses around the harbor sat out on their porches and watched the shelling of Fort Sumter, which would've been a straight shot from this house. Many of the neighboring houses had cannonballs come through the tops of their houses. A few of them still have them as souvenirs.