In Charleston, a historic house is rarely just a house. Along with its architecture comes another inheritance-the stories, traditions and legends passed from
one generation to the next. There is something about November in Charleston that makes you notice the
age of the city a little more. Perhaps it is the softer light, the cooler evenings or the way an early sunset illuminates the windows of houses that have stood here for centuries. We begin gathering around dinner tables and fireplaces again, and somehow it
feels like the season for telling stories.
And Charleston has never been short on those.have spent much of my life restoring historic properties, and after restoring 38 of them, I have learned that when you take on an old Charleston house, you rarely inherit only the architecture. You inherit its stories, too.
Some are carefully documented. Others have been handed from owner to owner until no one is entirely certain where history ends and folklore begins. There are tales of previous residents, peculiar happenings, unusual discoveries during renovations and traditions that have become so intertwined
with Charleston houses that we continue them today without always remembering why they began. Perhaps none is more recognizable than the pale blue ceilings that hover above so many Charleston pizzas.
Today, we love them because they are beautiful. Against old brick, stucco and white columns, that soft wash of blue seems to extend the sky and has become part of
the visual language of a Lowcountry house. But the tradition of what we now call haint blue has much deeper roots in Gullah Geechee culture.
According to the folklore, the watery blue was used around porches, doors and windows as protection from troublesome spirits, or "haints." The color was believed to resemble either water, which the spirits could not cross, or the sky, confusing them and sending them on their way.
It is one of the things I love about historic architecture here: something we
might first notice simply because it is pretty can carry generations of meaning.
And then there is the Boo Hag.
Part of Gullah Geechee folklore, the Boo Hag is considerably less charming than a blue piazza ceiling. The legend tells of a spirit that enters a home at night and "rides" a sleeping person, stealing their energy and leaving them exhausted by morning. Various protections evolved through the oral tradition, including that familiar blue placed
around the entrances of the home. Whether one believes the folklore is almost beside the point. What fascinates me is how these beliefs became embedded in the houses themselves. Paint colors, doorways, windows and porches were not merely decorative. A home could also be a place of protection, tradition and symbolism.
Then there are Charleston houses that
seem to have kept stories of their own. One of my favorites belongs to the Thomas
Rose House at 59 Church Street and Dr.Joseph Brown Ladd, remembered in
Charleston folklore as the Whistling Doctor. Ladd was a young physician and poet living in the house during the 1780s and was apparently known for whistling as he walked through Charleston. In 1786, he was mortally wounded in a duel and was taken back to the Church Street house, where he later died.
That part belongs to history. What came afterward belongs to Charleston.
For generations, people have claimed that a lone whistle can sometimes still be heard around the house and nearby Philadelphia Alley when no one appears to be there. Like so many Charleston stories, the documented life of a real person
has gradually become inseparable from the legend that followed him. Walk a little farther through the historic district and Charleston's relationship with its past becomes even more apparent. An old house will tell you quite a bit if you know how to look at it. And inevitably, someone will also tell you the story. The room where something supposedly happened. The former owner who never quite left. The footsteps someone heard on the stairs. The door that occasionally opens by itself. The story the neighbor remembers hearing from the family who lived there three owners ago.
Are they all true?
Probably not.
But that may be missing the point. Charleston's folklore is part of the way this city remembers itself. The stories connect people to places, and they give another dimension to buildings that
already possess extraordinary architectural histories. That is one of the reasons I remain so passionate about historic preservation. When we save an old house, we are preserving far more than brick, plaster and woodwork. We are preserving craftsmanship, history, family lives, cultural traditions—and sometimes a few mysteries that may never be completely
explained. In Charleston, every old house has had many lives. And if its walls could talk, I suspect we would discover that some of our best stories have yet to be told.
Our churchyards are not hidden far outside the city. They are woven directly
into it. Behind wrought-iron gates and beneath live oaks, centuries-old headstones sit
beside churches while life continues around them. People walk to dinner. Church bells ring. Cars pass. Residents head home. And only a few feet away are the names of Charlestonians who walked many of those same streets hundreds of years earlier. I have always thought there is something particularly Charleston about that. We don't live apart from our history. We live right in the middle of it. The same is true inside our old houses. Open a wall during a restoration and you may discover evidence of an earlier doorway. Pull away something added during a later renovation and suddenly an original fireplace appears. Floorboards bear marks from generations of use. Handmade bricks, old hardware, patches in plaster and changes The same is true inside our old houses. Open a wall during a restoration and you may discover evidence of an earlier doorway. Pull away something added during a later renovation and suddenly an original fireplace appears. Floorboards bear marks from generations of use. Handmade bricks, old hardware, patches in plaster and changes in molding tell you where one era ended and another began.
