Charleston SC: Where the Livin’ Is Easy

BY JASON A. ZWIKER

Originally published in the Summer 2007 issue of Coastal Homes magazine

 

“Gone with the Wind’s Rhett Butler may be a bit of a rogue, but he has impeccable taste. His determination to return to Charleston, South Carolina at the close of Margaret Mitchell’s epic stems from the hope that somewhere there is “… something left in life of charm and grace.”

If there is, it will be in Charleston, a well-mannered place where gentlemen working on their prize camellias tip their hats courteously to ladies walking their dogs along the cobblestone of Chalmers Street.

With the elegance of a European city, Charleston easily ranks as one of the country’s most beautiful and historic cities. Tucked between deep tidal rivers on the South Carolina coast, it is also a treasure trove of natural beauty — highlighted by rookeries; barrier islands; and live oaks wild with Spanish moss, lining paths to long-ago plantations. It is a place for the coastal-bound to put down roots.

Founded on the west bank of the Ashley River in 1670, the city of Charleston moved to the peninsula between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers just 10 years later.

Building a Bridge to the Past

In Charleston, Rhett would have enjoyed leisurely strolls by the magnificent homes along South and East Battery, or the colonial-era mercantile dwellings on East Bay Street that were later dubbed Rainbow Row. (The distinct pastel colors were added in the 1930s, a bit after Rhett’s time).

The 19th-century Edmonston-Alston House on Charleston Harbor is a spectacular example of the historic district’s architectural styles. The columns, side piazzas, cast-iron balcony and interior decoration recall a time of evening formals and separate rooms for drawing and withdrawing.

“Charleston was the very first city in the country to enact a preservation ordinance and board of architectural review,” says city architect Eddie Bello. “We don’t have just one or two stand-alone buildings that are historic and beautiful to look at; we have entire neighborhoods.”

The city and surrounding area today encompass a diversity of forms: historic plantations, upscale modern neighborhoods in gated communities and an emerging digital corridor with its high-tech jobs and robust growth. That’s the real joy of Charleston, SC – the juxtaposition of the tranquility of long ago with modern-day progress. A cutting-edge medical district thrives just blocks away from museums; music halls; and Hampton Park, where Charleston police groom horses for their mounted patrols. Aquarium Wharf offers harbor tours to Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. Patriot’s Point features the decommissioned USS Yorktown and the Congressional Medal of Honor Museum.

Along a 10-mile road connecting Charleston with Summerville, plantations such as Magnolia Gardens, Drayton Hall and Middleton Place offer a goosebump-inducing trip into the past.

A Luxurious Lifestyle

Charleston is fast becoming recognized not only as a historic city but as a vibrant, active adult communities overflowing with outdoors enthusiasts, bicyclists, anglers, sailors and artists. The winters are short and mild, the gardens are phenomenal, and regional planning committees are on the leading edge of conservation, dedicated to keeping wetlands, parks and waterways pristine.

The Market Square area, near the waterfront, features not just plenty of eateries but an open-air market where artists often display prized sweet grass baskets, handcrafted jewelry and other great gift items.

“Twilight garden parties, spectacular fund raising galas, impromptu concerts in the park, art shows – the verve with which Charleston socializes is one of the most exciting aspects of our community,” says local society editor Ida Becker. Indeed, “something wonderful occurs practically every day.”

It’s true. Gatherings, celebrations and festivals are a huge part of the culture of the city. Each summer, the renowned Spoleto Festival USA offers more than 100 performances of opera, dance, theater and music, ranging from the traditional to the highly experimental. Charleston is also home to Southeastern Wildlife Exposition, Charleston Food + Wine Festival, and MOJA Arts Festival, a two-week celebration of African-American and Caribbean arts, music and culture.

On King Street, a great place to browse for antiques or just people-watch, you never know whom you might see. Charleston is the hometown of TV performer Stephen Colbert, “Wheel of Time” novelist Robert Jordan, and Darius Rucker of Hootie & the Blowfish. It has also hosted the filming of many a motion picture, including “The Patriot” with Mel Gibson and “The Notebook” with James Garner.

Local sports fans flock to Joseph P. Riley, Jr. Stadium, home of baseball’s Charleston RiverDogs. Daniel Island features the Family Circle Cup of tennis, and the annual Cooper River Bridge Run draws runners from around the world.

Cuisine Seals the Deal

Of course, just between us, the factor that turns Charleston’s visitors into residents is the food: Fresh locally caught seafood, heirloom grains and an abundance of world-class chefs combine to make the area an epicure’s Eden.

McCrady’s, housed in an 18th-century English bond brick structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places and Landmarks, weaves together classic Southern cuisine and the cutting edge of modern gastronomy. FIG, which is Chef Mike Lata’s celebration of slow (as opposed to fast) food, stands for Food is Good (apparently so – Gourmet magazine lists FIG in its “Where to Eat Right Now in 30 American Cities” guide). Charleston Grill, in the west gallery of the Charleston Place Hotel, combines contemporary Lowcountry cuisine with live jazz and an impeccable ambiance.

For lunch, you can scarcely do better than Slightly North of Broad on East Bay Street, which blends Lowcountry heritage with Charleston’s other rich cultural traditions. Not only does it have great food, but it’s got the best energy of any lunch spot in the city as well.

Nor is food all that Charleston has to offer. Native scuppernong grapes, grown by Irvin-House Vineyards on nearby Wadmalaw Island, are harvested to produce a variety of Southern wines. The vineyard’s Blessing of the Vines each autumn combines local wine with picnicking on the lawn and live music for entertainment.

Good food and drink, shared in the cool of an afternoon sea breeze in coastal oceanfront real estate , is as fine a celebration of the leisurely pace of Southern life as one could wish. If you are considering relocating to the Charleston area, think back to the song “Summertime,” from Gershwin’s classic Charleston opera “Porgy and Bess,” and see whether the lyrics and melody don’t point the way.

 

Sweet Sultry Savannah

Some 13 years past ‘Midnight,’ it’s a more wonderful place to live than ever.

By Melissa Schneider

Originally published in the Fall 2007 issue of Coastal Homes magazine

 

For founder James Oglethorpe, 18th-century Savannah seemed ripe to turn into a New World utopia. For Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, it was a city to be spared in his march to the sea. For native-son composer Johnny Mercer, it was a lilting, lyrical muse. Quietly quirky, Savannah has been quite the history-book page-turner.

How ironic, then, that it was a modern-day story that really put it on the map. The explosive popularity of John Berendt’s 1994 best seller “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” caught Savannah by surprise. Berendt’s version of the murder trials of antique dealer Jim Williams, with a “cast” that included some pretty eccentric cronies, captured the nation’s imagination. The exotic tale soon had millions of fans heading to Savannah in search of the book’s central locales, such as Bonaventure Cemetery and Mercer House, Williams’ home on Monterey Square.

As the hullabaloo intensified, long-time Savannahians waited to see what would happen to their genteel way of life. And here’s what happened: Many of the visitors who circled their way through Savannah’s everyday life in trolleys wound up falling in love with the city which contains coastal communities with boating, fishing, oceanfront real estate, oceanfront communities, coastal vacation home rentals, and coastal golf course real estate returning to make it their home.

Yes, there’s a little more traffic and a little more diversity now. But 13 years past “Midnight,” the authentic heartbeat of Savannah – an intriguing mix of Southern hospitality, timeless traditions and a hint of mystery behind every doorway – remains appropriately strong and steady.

Those Famous Squares

Oglethorpe’s city plan, a warp and weft of streets linking open, parklike squares (21 of which still exist), created the intimate, sought-after neighborhoods featuring coastal golf communities, coastal retirement communities, and more in the historic district. Elegant row houses and cotton factors’ estates – now private homes, restaurants and galleries – look out onto landscaped squares, each with a statue or monument at its center, along with clusters of brilliant azaleas and the ancient canopies of live oaks draped in Spanish moss.

The shaded cobblestone streets connect the bustling riverfront to the open air cafés and galleries of City Market, and southward to shops on Broughton Street. Here sophisticated boutiques offer calfskin handbags, Vera Wang gowns and Parisian textiles. Pause for energy at Leopold’s ice cream store, a Savannah institution since 1919, and chat with owner Stratton Leopold, who has produced many Hollywood films – most notably “Mission: Impossible III.”

Bull Street, an idyllic walking thoroughfare, links five distinctive squares – Johnson, Wright, Chippewa, Madison and Montgomery – to the gem of Savannah, Forsyth Park. A favorite jaunt, it takes pedestrians past the sweeping arched windows of the ShopSCAD gallery and the Gryphon Tea Room. Overlooking Madison Square, both structures represent the efforts of the Savannah College of Art and Design to protect the city’s architectural heritage and way of life.

Arts and Culture

Recently Savannah’s cultural scene has broadened its appeal to reach a more diverse community.

For 18 days in the early spring the Savannah Music Festival brings together a cross section of renowned artists from all genres. More than 100 performances of jazz, classical, blues, bluegrass, gospel and Latin music are staged at 20 intimate venues across the historic district, and tickets to premieres and commissioned works sell quickly. Celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2008, the festival hopes to exceed the current record attendance of 55,000 concert-goers and eventually rival the success of Spoleto in Charleston, S.C.

The Jepson Center for the Arts, opened in 2006, is writing a new page in Savannah’s history with its world-class traveling exhibitions and a multilevel, hands-on children’s gallery. Across the square at the Telfair Center for the Arts, the hottest ticket in town is the Telfair Ball. But quickly gaining in popularity is the “The Artful Table,” an annual exhibit of table-setting masterpieces from Savannah’s most accomplished hosts.

Savannahians appreciate good parties, and Southern homes are delightful venues for entertaining. Known for her elegant soirées, Savannah caterer Susan Mason is in demand from Hollywood to New York City to Savannah.

“What sets parties in Savannah apart is that the food is served in beautiful surroundings,” she says. “Indoors, the rooms are wonderfully intimate. Outside, we entertain on big verandas, breezy porches and courtyard gardens.”

Gardens More Good than Evil

Behind the ornamented gates and brick walls thick with ivy are the hidden gardens of Savannah. The temperate climate of the coast has allowed generations of gardeners to cultivate trimmed boxwood, camellias, azaleas and ferns beneath trickling fountains. When azalea blossoms are at their peak, gardeners open their creaky wrought iron gates for the Savannah Tour of Homes and Gardens, a four-day stroll through more than 20 private gardens and homes in the historic district and Savannah’s first suburb, Ardsley Park.

Edged with seasonal blossoms and white picket fences, the plantation homes and gilded-age summer cottages of Isle of Hope, Dutch Island and Beaulieu are tucked in the bend of small rivers feeding to Ossabaw Sound. A 10-minute drive from downtown Savannah, Georgia, they provide coastal intimacy via silent kayak rides along shallow, grassy marshes; fresh-from-the-dock blue crab dinners; and evening sunset cruises on Johnny Mercer’s Moon River, still wider than a mile.

Dining in the Best of Places

With Savannah’s proximity to the sea and saltwater marshes, restaurant seafood abounds – oysters, shrimp, blue crab, grouper and mackerel.

Request a second floor, Reynolds Square-view table at The Olde Pink House, a 1771 mansion built by James Habersham, and begin your meal with a bowl of the she crab bisque. Follow this with the pan-seared crab cakes and a side of whipped sweet potatoes with vanilla sauce.

Spectacular Savannah River views draw diners to Vic’s on the River, which makes its home on three floors of an antebellum cotton warehouse. Chef Jay Cantrell keeps them coming back with his creative take on traditional Southern food. He says he combines “all the bounty of the Lowcountry waterways and the locally grown produce,” put together with a contemporary flair. Don’t miss the fried green tomato appetizer, a traditional Southern dish that Chef Jay pairs with tangy goat cheese and sweet tomato chutney.

Preparing Southern cuisine is no longer a mystery, thanks to Chef Darin Sehnert’s 700 Kitchen Cooking School. Housed inside a fashionable boutique hotel, The Mansion on Forsyth Park, the school offers hands-on instruction for preparing cheddar and chive biscuits and rich shrimp and red-eye gravy over fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth grits. Students top off the meal with pecan praline angel food cake and good conversation.

On Friday nights couples gather at Casimirs, the Mansion on Forsyth’s opulent second floor lounge. The popular tables are outdoors on the marble rooftop terrace, looking out on Forsyth Park and the glistening white fountain that has been delighting visitors for nearly 150 years.

As you relax, poised between the hotel’s magnificent lounge setting and the simple beauty of the fragrant, 30-acre park, the tug of old and new Savannah is palpable and delicious – the perfect setting to begin a new story.