The Holy City, preserved on purpose
Charleston has been in the business of preserving itself longer than anywhere else in the country. In 1931 the city passed the first historic district zoning ordinance in the United States, which is why the peninsula still looks like the 18th century decided to stay put. The Civil War opened here on April 12, 1861, when Confederate batteries ringing the harbor fired on Fort Sumter. Gadsden's Wharf, a few blocks north of the Battery, was the arrival point for a large share of the enslaved Africans brought to North America; the International African American Museum opened on the site in 2023. Look closely at the older facades and you will find iron plates bolted into the brick — earthquake bolts, threaded through entire houses to hold them together after the 1886 quake. The pastel of Rainbow Row is not colonial at all. It dates to a 1930s restoration.
