Charleston's Heritage and Architectural Legacy. Founded in 1670 by colonists from Barbados, Charleston was South Carolina's first permanent European settlement. Through the slave-based economy of plantation agriculture, the colony of South Carolina and the port city of Charleston became the home of a wealthy elite. By the time of the American Revolution, Charleston was the cosmopolitan center of the southern colonies and the fourth largest city in English North America.

Following independence, Charleston remained the seat of the state's aristocracy and a cultural center for the South, despite a gradual decline in its economic fortunes beginning in the 1820's. South Carolina's secession convention voted to secede from the Union at a Charleston meeting in December 1860, and Fort Sumter in the city's harbor was seized the following April. As the birthplace of the Civil War and the second largest city in the Confederacy, Charleston was the focus of extensive military operations. After the war, Charleston's economy stagnated and the city quickly lost its rank as a major southern city. Because slow growth did not permit construction of new structures, much of the city's historic fabric remained intact into the twentieth century.

In the 1920's, the city's architectural and cultural heritage became the focus of pioneering efforts in historic preservation. The Preservation Society of Charleston was formed in 1920 when a landmark house was threatened, and in 1928 the city's first historic house museum was established. The nation's first local historic district was created in Charleston in 1931 by placing zoning restrictions on all of the historic structures of the lower peninsula. Since the 1940's, the Historic Charleston Foundation has done much to preserve the city's legacy through an active revolving fund, facade easements, and efforts to restore historic neighborhoods without gentrification and displacement.

Charleston's historic architecture is a combination of European, Caribbean, and African influences. Its historic public buildings represent some of the finest examples of antebellum architecture in the United States. Outstanding examples of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century residential architecture are found in Charleston's streetscapes and on the plantation landscapes surrounding the city. An architectural type distinct to the city is the Charleston single house. Charleston is rich in African-American heritage and sites because blacks comprised a majority of greater Charleston's antebellum population. While most of these African-Americans were slaves, the city was home to a relatively large class of free blacks, many of whom were artisans. Field School participants will see this African-American heritage throughout the city and at nearby plantations.
 
 
For more information on the historic architecture of Charleston, see Jonathan H. Poston, The Buildings of Charleston (Columbia:  University of South Carolina Press, 1997).  For more information on the history of South Carolina in general, see Walter Edgar, South Carolina:  A History (Columbia:  University of South Carolina Press, 1998).

For a history of historic preservation in Charleston, see Robert Weyeneth, Historic Preservation for a Living City (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000).