Charleston Driving History Tour

This is a private driving tour for the more sophisticated traveler. You will of course learn about Charleston’s colorful history but you will also hear about what it’s like living in this unique and fascinating city today. The tour begins at White Point Gardens, the very southern tip of the penninsula and where the settlers landed in 1680. There you will see the Lather Stevens home, at 17,000 sq. ft. the second largest home in Charleston. It was at a meeting in the ballroom of this home in 1920 where the preservation movement in this country was born. Then to the William Gibbes - built in 1772. Cornelia Roebling (designer of the Brooklyn Bridge and featured in the tv series The Gilded Age) purchased this house in 1928. When she came here she had her world famous landscape architect, Loutrel Briggs, design her garden. As a result, Briggs eventually designed more than 100 gardens here in Charleston.

As we drive along E. Battery Street we will be on the waterfront and we will see more of Charleston’s largest homes. We will see 5 E. Battery. One of the most beautiful homes in Charleston. Scott Bessent, our current Sec. of the Treasury just completed a 5 and a half year restoration to this home and sold it for $18 million. We will then step onto the high battery where you will learn about the Civil War and the Revolutionary War. I will talk about the Battle of Battery Wagner, featured in the movie Glory and Revolutionary War Battle of Sullivan’s Island. As we drive further you will see the Edmonston Alston House, a museum house today and featured in the tv series Outer Banks, the Carolina Yaughtless Club, the Charleston Club and Rainbow Row. As we drive along E. Battery Street you will see more of Charleston’s largest homes and hear interesting and amusing stories about social life here in Charleston today.

Once on Meeting Street we will pass by St. Michael’s Church. If the doors are open we will go in. It’s one of Charleston’s most beautiful churches and George Washington prayed in this church if 1791. Two signors of the Constitution - John Rutledge and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney are both buried in the graveyard. We will see South Carolina Society Hall, built in 1804 and the current home of Charleston’s Cotillion. Then to the Nathanial Russell House, one of Charleston’s most beautiful museum houses. We will step in to the gardens of this house, one of Charleston’s finest gardens. On to the Williams Mansion. At 24,000 sq. ft. Charleston’s largest private residence, built after the Civil War in the Italianate style. George Williams was a wealthy merchant before the Civil War and a blockade runner during the war. Martha Mitchell, author of Gone with The Wind visited this home as a young women and we think she may have gotten the inspiration of her book when she was here.

We will conclude our tour on Tradd Street where we will be in what was Charleston’s original walled city. We will see some of Charleston’s oldest homes. Some built in the early 1700’s. Lined with Crape Mertyle trees and carefully manicured window boxes, Tradd Street is one of Charleston’s most charming streets and a site for the movie The Patriot. We will see the neighborhood “Catfish Row” subject of the play “Porgy and Bess” and talk about a middle class black neighborhood in Charleston before the Civil War.