The Home Page | Scenes from the South

Credit: Sarah Sinclair

This edition of The Home Page was originally emailed to subscribers on July 22, 2024. To receive Sarah Sinclair’s real estate newsletter in your inbox each Sunday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

I was in Charleston, South Carolina last week for the Association of Alternative Newsmedia annual convention. The atmosphere was exciting, the content was energizing, and the city was charming beyond belief. I took soooo many photos, and I promised to share, so here you go.

We were inside learning most of our days, but I got outside and found plenty to explore. The iconic Rainbow Row, shown above, is an historic row of pastel-colored houses near the waterfront. Literally everything in downtown Charleston is historic, and stately houses line almost all of the streets. For more than 100 years, every edifice and element that is street-facing has been protected. Colors, materials, style — are all mandated to stay exactly the same.

Among the distinctive architectural features that I enjoyed learning about were the sideways-facing patios on many of the large “single houses.” Known as piazzas, the patios have a public-facing front door that is really on the side of the house. In the brick house above, the black door that looks like a front door actually leads to the piazza. Confused? Basically, the houses are set “sideways” on the street.

The piazza is more easily seen in this yellow house. It has a blue door leading to its piazza, and then a white double door farther down the piazza that is the formal front door. The fact that we can see its front edifice, and that it has a front yard at all, is unusual. Functioning as an outdoor room, I’m told that piazzas were especially useful in the 17th century, when many of these homes were built. At a time when modesty and fashion dictated multiple layers of clothing, the piazzas allowed people to relax outside with only one layer of clothing on in the hot South Carolina summers, since they were technically behind closed doors. Single houses were usually built facing south to take advantage of cooling ocean breezes.

Yes, Charleston in July was hot, but not too hot. I used buses, pedicabs, and even a horse-drawn carriage to see as much as possible. The omnipresent carriage tours use a city-controlled lottery system, which I first heard about in this food-centric account by Indy Senior Editor Matt Kettmann. Our tour lucked out and got to travel on some streets that are not usually viewed due to a construction detour.

On the last night of the conference, we enjoyed a group dinner aboard the Charleston Princess as we toured around Charleston harbor, with a pause for a close-up view of Fort Sumter. As the sun was setting, we watched dolphins jump just off the bow of the ship, a scene reminiscent of home that left my colleagues Leslie Dinaberg, Brandi Rivera, and I all smiling at the end of a lovely visit.

There’s a different ocean scene on the cover of this week’s issue, and a ton of real estate info in the back. Happy reading to you, and enjoy your Sunday!