"I'm going back to dignity and grace. I'm going back to Charleston, where I belong." (Rhett Butler, Gone with the Wind) Rhett Butler's statement is often the way people imagine Charleston, South Carolina to be today; a decadent historical southern city that has not changed since prior to the Civil War. However, this image is very misleading. It is through efforts of historical preservation in the twentieth century that Charleston has been able to emulate a pre Civil War historical appearance. This preservation movement began in the 1920s as a response to the destruction of historic structures in order to accommodate automobiles. Thus, the historical preservation movement lead Charleston to economic stability as a means of “sell[ing] the city... to the outside world” and creating tourism as its main industry.
Figure 1: This image is a plan of Charleston in 1704 during its first settlements. The map will be later useful to describe the development and layout of the city and how Charleston expanded and what of the original structure still remains today.
Figure 2: This is a map of Charleston's Historical Preservation Plan. The dark red area represents the existing historical district and the other colors are those the city still proposes to preserve.
Figure 3: The rainbow Row Section of East Bay Street in the early 20th Century.
Figure 4: The Rainbow Row Section of Charleston today.
Figure 3 and 4: It is interesting to compare these two images as both of the images are of the same area. One can see that the Rainbow Row Section resemble early 20th century industrial architecture whereas figure 4 although it is the image of today shows a more dated version of Figure 3.
Charleston is a very cool city, and one rich with concurrent historical narratives. I'm interested to see how you contextualize Charleston's populations and culture over time with the developments that came out of historical preservation movements. Were these positive relationships or negative ones?
ReplyDeleteTry to connect the introductory quote with the thesis a little more clearly- was there a period of time when Charleston was not a city of dignity and grace? If it was restored to economic stability through preservation and tourism, what was its economic state before that movement began?
ReplyDeleteHow did folks in Charleston decide what to preserve and what to leave out? And what are the politics of that?
ReplyDeleteI think the use of the word "falsification" in your title is interesting, and gives a dimension to your introduction that would not otherwise be there. Do you plan on arguing that historical preservation, in this case, is a falsification or Charleston's history? Could be an interesting theme to explore.
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