Charleston - home of great Museums

                        Charleston's Top 5 Museums

Charleston, SC, is one of America's most historic cities, with a rich cultural, natural and military heritage. There's no better spot to experience Charleston's past than in its many museums:

The Charleston Museum

The Charleston Museum was founded in 1773 and is called "America’s First Museum."  Visitors enjoy hundreds of artifacts that give personal insight into Charleston’s Colonial, agricultural and wartime past. Examine cultivation tools and sweet grass baskets that slaves used to harvest and cull rice in the fields, and view “slave badges,” haunting relics of a troubled past. Tribal pottery and quilts showcase decorative arts and traditions from early natives to English colonists, while uniforms  and armaments bring to life Charleston’s role in the Revolutionary and Civil wars.

Gibbes Museum of Art

This art museum houses an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts, from eras including the colorful Charleston Renaissance. One  finds the faces that played major roles in Charleston’s history as one strolls through rooms of portraits, many commissioned from classically-trained European artists who brought their skills across the Atlantic to serve Colonial Charleston’s elite. At this newly renovated museum one find also contemporary art work by artists native to the area whose works express the rich and culturally diverse story of Lowcountry heritage.

The Old Slave Market

The Old Slave Mart was once part of Ryan’s Mart, a complex that spread from Chalmers to Queen streets, and included a brick-enclosed yard, a slave jail, a kitchen and a “dead house,” or morgue. Slave auctions took place on this site until November 1863. After the Civil War, the property underwent many ownership changes and served many functions, incl. periods as an auto repair shop and tenement housing. When sisters Judith and Louise Wragg took over the Old Slave Mart in 1964, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is now a museum. One can find artifacts of African arts and crafts that illustrate Charleston’s role in the slave trade.

Karpeles Manuscript Museum 

This is definitely a trip back in time to an era when reading material was made of paper, and some was even written by hand. The Karpeles Manuscript Museum houses the world’s largest private collection of historic manuscripts in a Greek Revival building fronted by dramatic Corinthian columns. Originally a Methodist church, the grand structure served as a hospital during the Civil War. These days, it’s supported by philanthropist David Karpeles, who funds 7 other document repositories nationwide. A "Must-see item" in the Karpeles’s permanent display is the Constitution of the Confederate States of America. 

American Fire Museum 

A short drive up to North Charleston, this is the nation’s largest collection of American LaFrance firefighting trucks and apparatus, all lovingly restored.  A walk among the museum’s shiny engines and horse-drawn fire wagons is a lesson in America’s firefighting history. There are Interactive exhibits i.e. demonstrations to show what it feels to lift the 100 pounds of equipment a firefighter wears on the job or how take a turn speeding to an emergency scene in a full-size fire truck driving simulator ! Children can climb a real firefighter’s ladder and slide down the fire pole on a large, indoor play set.

Well, that is just another thing to do do when visiting Charleston or even making Charleston your home. And if you are looking for real estate to buy or just to lease, contact me via email mailto: uappleby@gmail.com, by phone 843-345-2625 or visit my website www.DefinitelyCharleston.com