Photo, Print, Drawing The Walled City of Charles Town, Bounded by Cumberland Street, East Bay Street, Water Street, and Meeting Street, Charleston, Charleston County, SC

Title

• The Walled City of Charles Town, Bounded by Cumberland Street, East Bay Street, Water Street, and Meeting Street, Charleston, Charleston County, SC

Names

• Historic American Landscapes Survey, creator
• Charles II (King)
• Sayle, William
• Locke, John
• Cooper, Anthony Ashley
• Culpepper, John
• Matthews, Maurice
• South Carolina General Assembly
• de Vauban, Sebastien Le Prestre
• Crisp, Edward
• Beale, Othniel
• Clemson University/College of Charleston, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, sponsor
• Marcoux, Jon Bernard, faculty sponsor
• Gardiner, Lisa, historian
• O'Brien, Bernard, historian
• Scocozzo, Vito, historian
• Stevens, Christopher M., transmitter
• McPartland, Mary, transmitter

Created / Published

• Documentation compiled after 2000

Headings

• -  brick walls
• -  earthworks (engineering works)
• -  forts & fortifications
• -  fortification elements
• -  magazines (military buildings)
• -  bastions
• -  archaeological sites
• -  palisades
• -  waterfronts
• -  rivers
• -  wharves
• -  churches
• -  settlements
• -  settlement patterns
• -  trade
• -  moats
• -  drawbridges
• -  South Carolina--Charleston County--Charleston

Latitude / Longitude

• 32.776663,-79.929254

Notes

• -  2020 HALS Challenge Entry: Vanishing or Lost Landscapes
• -  Significance: The walled city landscape of Charleston, South Carolina is significant because it was the only English walled city in North America. With the discovery of the New World, the imperial powers of Europe built settlements and surrounded them with fortifications. The Dutch had walled cities at New Amsterdam and Albany, the French had Detroit and New Orleans, and the Spanish fortified St. Augustine. The English built defenses for their settlements at Boston and Savannah, as well as Charleston. However, Charleston was the only English city, in North America, to be entirely fortified, with walls and earthworks surrounding the entirety of the city. What was to become the first permanent English settlement south of Virginia was likely only able to succeed because of the fortifications that defended it. As one of the most heavily fortified cities in North America at the time of its settlement in late seventeenth century, Charleston was able to thwart the efforts of Spanish and French invaders, and go on to be a prosperous English stronghold in North America. Above-ground evidence of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Charles Town, South Carolina, and the brick walls and earthworks that once protected it have largely disappeared. Fires, particularly that of 1740, which destroyed forty percent of the original city, and other natural disasters, are to blame for much of the disappearance of the early town. The early fortifications were slowly disassembled as the City of Charleston (incorporated in 1783) began to expand and had less use for them. The extant physical remains of the early city are mostly below ground and invisible to the public. One of the only remaining structures from the early city is the Old Powder Magazine, located on Cumberland Street, which dates to 1713. The structure is the oldest secular public building still standing in South Carolina, dating back to the proprietary rule of the colony of Carolina. Another remaining structure, the "pink house," located on Chalmers Street, was constructed in 1712 and is representative of the early architecture of the city. The early architecture of Charles Town, including the "pink house," and the Old Powder Magazine, have been described as early English architecture, as well as post medieval and Jacobean. The fortifications that surrounded Charles Town helped to create a dense urban environment, and thus gave the core of the city the appearance of a European walled city. There was an expansion of building beyond the fortification prior to the fire of 1740. With this growth in development, city's oldest streets including Broad, Tradd, Church, and East Bay Streets were extended. A good number of the historic structures built in the last half of the eighteenth century still stand and help Charleston retain the feel of a dense European city to this day. Beginning in the twentieth century, sections of the principle masonry fortification wall were uncovered along East Bay Street. In 1925, the foundations of the Granville Bastion, which was once located at the southeast corner of the walled city along the harbor, was found beneath the Missroon House at 40 East Bay Street. In 1965, historians uncovered the masonry remains of the Half-Moon Battery in the basement of the Old Exchange Building at the foot of Broad Street. Both of these discoveries revealed significant details about this well-engineered, early infrastructure of the city. Today, much of the original walled city has been erased from the landscape, yet efforts are being made to protect its archaeological evidence. In 2005, Charleston Mayor, Joseph P. Riley assembled the "Mayor's Walled City Task Force," whose mission is to identify, protect and interpret the city's colonial fortifications. The team is comprised of historians, archaeologists, preservationists, and several representatives from city agencies whose work involves excavation and permitting. One of the major excavations lead by the Task Force took place in 2008, and continued in 2009, at the intersection of Tradd Street, and East Bay Street, along the city's former waterfront. The excavations located a triangular brick redan, cypress palings, and additional archaeological evidence of the bustling eighteenth century waterfront. An ongoing and parallel effort to protect the remains of the fortifications is the establishment of a city archeological ordinance. This legislation would cover the entire historic district in Charleston, in which the walled city is located. It would create the position of city archaeologist, and mandate an archaeological investigation for significant properties undergoing development. Although it has not yet been enacted, this ordinance would allow for the protection of the remnants of the wall that once defended the City of Charleston, which are now threatened by increased urban development.
• -  Survey number: HALS SC-24
• -  Building/structure dates: 1680 Initial Construction
• -  Building/structure dates: 1696 Subsequent Work
• -  Building/structure dates: 1703 Subsequent Work
• -  Building/structure dates: 1784 Subsequent Work
• -  Building/structure dates: 1740 Subsequent Work
• -  National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 66000964

Medium

• Data Page(s): 21

Call Number/Physical Location

• HALS SC-24

Source Collection

• Historic American Landscapes Survey (Library of Congress)

Repository

• Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Control Number

• sc1237

Rights Advisory

• No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government; images copied from other sources may be restricted. https://aj.sunback.homes/rr/print/res/114_habs.html

Online Format

• pdf