If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 574

 

 

 

 

 

Rainbow Row, Charleston, South Carolina, ca 1977-1981

 

This used postcard has a photograph by Ernest Ferguson of the pastel colored buildings known as Rainbow Row in Charleston, South Carolina.  The card was published by Charleston Post Card. Co., Inc. and has 29394-C at the lower left corner on the reverse.  There is also a blurb just above the number:  “Rainbow Row, Charleston, S.C.  Typical of the English type of architecture are these double houses of eighteenth century aspect.  This East Bay scene is near the site of Vanderhorst Row, a three story building believed to be the first apartment house built in America.”  The card has scalloped edges and stamps that date it to between 1977 and 1981. 

 

These 13 historic row houses were restored and painted in the 1930s and 1940s and take their name from their exterior pastel colors.  It is a tourist attraction and one of the most photographed part of Charleston.  Originally these buildings were right on the Cooper River font but that land has since been filled in.  The buildings were first used by merchants whose stores occupied the ground floor and living quarters were found above.  Most of the buildings did not have interior stair access and residents had to use exterior stairs located in the yards behind the houses.  In 1778 a fire destroyed most of the neighborhood with only numbers 95 to 101 on East Bay Street surviving.  The earliest built house was constructed in the 1740s by Othneil Beale.  That house was was referred to as the "new Brick Store." It is one of the landmarks.  A few of the other houses were built prior to the 1778 fire, but several were built after the fire.  The newest house was built in 1845 and anchors the southernmost end of Rainbow Row.

 

Following the Civil War much of this area fell into near slum conditions.  Beginning in 1920 efforts were made to preserve the houses by Susan Pringle Frost, founder of the Society for Preservation of Old Dwellings, who bought six of the houses but she was unable to restore them immediately.  In 1931 Dorothy Haskell Porcher Legge, purchased a section of the houses from number 99 through 101 and began to renovate them.  She is responsible for painting them in a Caribbean color scheme.  Future owners continued the tradition.  By 1945 almost all of the 13 houses had been restored. 

 

Most of the houses on Rainbow Row share walls with their neighbors.  For a summary of historical information about each house, including the original dates the houses were built, see:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Row