Charleston

Author: By Steve Bailey, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, July 20, 1997

Page: M9

Section: Travel

Nearly 60 years ago, when she and her friend, Olga, were 15-year-old girls, they had spent a week in a cramped rental my mother's family had taken on Folly Beach, a little honky tonk area just outside Charleston. During that week the girls had latched onto two older boys, both Citadel-bound; my Mom got the tall, good-looking one, David, and Olga got the short one, Joe.

For a week they danced up a storm on the pavilion, rode the bumper cars and spent all the boys' money -- until they dumped them at the end of the week and went back to life-as-usual in their insular little neighborhood of Rosemont. That was the end of David and Joe, or so my Momma and Olga thought.

Two years later Olga, married by then to Mack, was getting on a city bus when Joe came running up, declaring his undying love.

``Are you crazy,'' she asked? ``I'm married.''

``Leave him, leave him. Marry me,'' begged Joe.

Olga got to her seat, but Joe kept pleading with her from outside, reaching in through the window of the bus. Olga rolled the window up on his hand, and the bus drove away without him. That was the last they saw of Joe.

All of this would seem long ago and far away except for this: Joe grew up to be a doctor, the county physician actually, married a woman, a lifelong invalid, and eventually bought and raised his family at sprawling Lowndes Grove Plantation -- the very place where my Momma was now telling this story from the piazza overlooking the Ashley River.

My Momma, Southern that she is, has never quite been able to forgive or forget. ``I said, Olga by damn! If you had played your cards right you could have married Little Joe. He would have died off, and I would have lived here with you!''

My Mom and her friend may have missed their big chance when Olga slammed that window on Little Joe's hand 60 years ago, but considering that turning point of history -- somehow missed by all the historians who have chronicled Charleston's past -- Lowdnes Grove Plantation Bed & Breakfast Inn seemed just the place to launch our journey through Charleston's inns and B & Bs.

Charleston tourism has exploded in the 25 years since I left town for college, never to come back save for visits. Back then the economy was built on the Charleston Navy base and the shipyard, both momuments to the seniority and muscle of US Representative Mendel Rivers, one of those crusty Democrats that Southerners kept sending back to Congress, not because they particularly liked his politics but because they knew they would keep the pork -- otherwise known as jobs -- rolling in.

There was a tourism industry, or so we thought. You could ride by the homes of Rainbow Row and a handful of houses were open to visitors. If you were struggling like us, you waited until Washington's birthday or some other holiday when you could get into the Heyward-Washington house for free. Mr. Wagner operated the only horse and carriage in the city and for 50 cents he would ride my brother, Michael, and me around the Battery. The Francis Marion and the Fort Sumter Hotel were the places -- practically the only places, in fact -- to stay.

A lot has changed in Charleston, much of it for the better.

The city is on its biggest roll since its most prosperous era around 1810. The economy is booming, and tourism is the driving force. The Navy base, with no Cold War to justify it and no Mendel Rivers to protect it, is gone. But dire predictions aside, the area never missed a beat, thanks to a diverse economy built on tourism, a continuing military presence, and Charleston's role as a medical and government center.

Charleston's renaissance has been, to an unusual degree, propelled by one man, Joseph P. Riley Jr., the city's mayor for 22 years. In a city long averse to change, Riley has pushed, piece by piece, a series of public-private developments that have remade the city and Charleston's own vision of itself.

Charleston Place, the big downtown hotel and shopping complex at the foot of the city's old marketplace, was the first and most dramatic of Riley's building blocks. The Spoleto Festival, the music and arts extravaganza that he imported from Italy, gave the city a signature event. His latest project, an expensive new aquarium, is now being hotly debated.

What Riley has wrought is a magnificient small city that manages to accommodate the 3 million people who visit every year -- Charleston is the third most popular US destination if you believe Conde Nast Traveler magazine (Boston is fifth) -- and its 95,000 residents who live here.

The best way to see Charleston is in shorts and with a good pair of sneakers. It is a city made for wanderers, a place to discover things on your own: the narrow cobblestone alleys, the hidden gardens south of Broad, John C. Calhoun's grave in the cemetery across from St. Philip's Church, the antique shops along King Street, the gulleys on Sullivan's Island.

Keep walking. Look hard. And what you'll find is that this is no simple city. It is, in fact, a complicated city with a complicated history. As historian Robert Rosen puts it, ``There is good and evil in that history, for the city is not innocent.''

And that is what makes Charleston, and its people, endlessly fascinating.

The city was founded in 1670 and named for Charles II. As Rosen notes, perhaps no city in America was more aptly named. Charles was known as kind, tolerant, a good king, but also as one of the most hedonistic of the English monarchs. This was a man who liked women, and had at least 14 illegitimate children; Charles was, as the English say, ``the father of his people, or at least a great many of them.''

He would have been very comfortable in his namesake city. There may have never been a more hedonistic society in America than Charleston's ruling planter class in the late 18th century, says Rosen. They loved horse racing, cockfighting, and dancing. Eating was high sport, too.

The world -- Charleston included -- is tamer today, but the plethora of bars and restaurants along King, Market, and East Bay streets and the gambling and strip joints that continue to flourish just over the city line are evidence that this is still Charles's city. Charlestonians, then and now, have always loved a party.

``Josiah Quincy, the Boston Puritan, who visited Charleston in 1773, would probably be just as outraged today,'' says Rosen.

Race, too, has always been a central theme in Charleston.

This was, after all, the capital of Southern slavery. Charleston was the country's major slave port and no American city fought so hard to preserve its peculiar institution. By 1830, three out of four white families owned at least one slave.

I can remember sitting in the car as a boy as my father, a Philadelphia Yankee, walked across the street to get us BBQ at the drive-in and not understanding why we just didn't drive up and get served like everybody else. What he didn't explain, but I would learn soon enough, is that they would serve us but not Wayne Brown, my Dad's part-time employee and our friend, who was in the car, because he was black.

Those segregationist days are gone, and Charleston is struggling with race just as every other American city is. The racism here never had the mean edge it had elsewhere, and today race relations are polite, just as almost everything is here. Tensions remain, but are largely unspoken.

Black or white, Charlestonians love their city.

They passed the first historic zoning ordinance in the United States in 1931, and development battles are fought foot by foot on the radio talk shows and the letters to the editor page of the Post & Courier. This is the Holy City to those who live here.

As the city has prospered with tourism as its engine, the question has grown more immediate: How much is too much?

The worry is that at some point Joe Riley's constant expansion will simply overwhelm all that makes Charleston Charleston. What you hear constantly is that no one here wants to be Williamsburg, a perfect replica where no one actually lives. And no one wants to be bawdy, gaudy New Orleans, either.

Charlestonians are right to worry. This is a city, after all, that has survived war, earthquakes, great fires, and deadly hurricanes, but tourism, Anne Taylor, Saks, and Banana Republic are another thing altogether. The horse-drawn carriages are big business at this point, but at what point do the urine-soaked streets just become overwhelming on a swelting day? Did Henry's, a tradition to generations, really have to turn into a slick bar with loud Dixieland music to survive down there at the marketplace?

Maybe no one has watched over Charleston longer and better than Frank B. Gilbreth Jr., who for 40 years was to Charleston what Herb Caen was to San Francisco. His daily ``Doing the Charleston'' column for the News & Courier, written under the name of Ashley Cooper, was required reading in town. You didn't have to like him, but you did have to read him.

Lord Ashley's judgment: Not to worry, Charlestonians are not about to lose what they so cherish.

His job as a columnist, says Ashley Cooper, was ``to try to straighten people out.'' And he was gracious but more than willing to straighten me out: Yes, he says, the market has gotten awefully crowded; ``I hate to even drive down there.'' But, he says, ``as a whole Charleston has been very sensible in its development. It could have gotten a whole lot worse.''

``Charleston has held the line pretty well,'' he says.

Still, at 86 and retired, you don't have to scratch hard to find the cranky columnist. His verdict on Spoleto, now the centerpiece of Charleston's spring season? ``Spoleto is getting to be a pain,'' he fusses. The festival, for all its success, just doesn't fit in with Charleston. ``Lots of people here aren't interested in that sort of thing. It is worthwhile, but it belongs someplace else -- say, Boston.''

If it had been up to my Mom, we would have taken a room at the Planters' Hotel, Charleston's first hotel, which played host to the great planter families of the antebellum era. Or the Charleston Hotel, which was the grandest hotel ever built in the city.

Both are long gone, however. The Planters' Hotel is now the Dock Street Theater, the graceful landmark on Church Street. But the Charleston Hotel met a far less appealing end: It was demolished to make way for a motel, which to this day remains the gold standard for folly in the city's development history.

Back in 1977, when Riley and the city first imported Spoleto, there were so few rooms in the city that Riley had to ask residents to open their homes to visitors. That sparked the rebirth of the bed-and- breakfasts in Charleston, and a new generation of inns and small hotels have followed in the last 20 years along with a handful of larger, high-end hotels like Charleston Place and the Mills House Hotel.

Today Charleston is busy making room in the inn. The city is in the midst of an unprecedented hotel building boom that will add at least 2,500 rooms in the next two years, an increase of about 25 percent in the number of hotel rooms.

Some of the new hotels are being built from the ground up, but many are in recycled warehouses and office buildings throughout the city. Even the old Citadel in Marion Square has been remade into an Embassy Suites. The old Francis Marion is again open as a hotel.

As we spent a few days poking through Charleston's hotels, inns, and bed and breakfasts, this much came clear to us: The Charleston we love is old not new, small not big.

Of course, old and small isn't for everyone. Charlestown Place, recently taken over by Orient-Express Hotels, one of the best chains in the world, remains the city's signature hotel with its perfect location, grand staircase, and dazzling chandeliers. But we found ourselves most happy out on Little Joe's piazza, overlooking the live oaks, Spanish moss, and salt-water marshes.

Lowndes Grove Plantation Bed & Breakfast Inn is the only surviving plantation on the city's historic peninsula. The downside of Lowndes Grove that is too far to hike to the downtown, but it offers closest thing you'll find to experiencing what life must of been like for the spoiled planter class that ruled the antebellum South.

Built in 1786, the house sits in a quiet residential neighborhood at the foot of the Citadel on 5 1/2 acres of what used to be a more than a 300-acre estate. There are but six rooms in the main house, and all have high ceilings, fireplaces and are decorated with a mix of antiques and Charleston reproductions. There are a few more rooms in a carriage house out back, and a pool, too, but we won't hold that against it.

Lowdnes Grove had sat vacant for six years when it was bought by Charles and Martha Craven, who cashed in their dry cleaning business in North Carolina to move to Charleston and renovate historic homes. Their efforts haven't been appreciated by everyone: When they wanted to open a B & B here, neighbors and the city objected until the Cravens threatened to subdivide the land into single-family homes; the cutting of a magnolia tree created another fuss.

But it gets a thumbs up from us. Rates at Lowdnes Grove run from $80 to $130, depending on the season. The number is (803) 723-8438.

A tip for visitors: Not everything in Charleston is as it appears, and that goes for the city's hotels and inns as well. ``Inn'' is a broad term in this town and as often as not can turn out to be a small, or not so small, hotel. If you are expecting small and intimate you can easily be disappointed.

Among our favorities, small and not-so-small:

- Two Meeting Street Inn is on everyone's list, and it certainly makes ours. Located on the historic Battery, this romantic Queen Anne Victorian mansion is the classic Charleston inn with white rockers on broad piazzas and a marvelous garden all around. There are nine guest rooms, and the whole place is furnished with antiques, Oriental rockers, and Tiffany windows. Washington never slept here, but my brother did on his honeymoon. (Rates, $145-$235; telephone 803-723-7322.)

- The Planters Inn is among the best-done of the new generation of smaller-hotels-as-inns. With 41 rooms and another 21 being added, the building (circa 1844) most recently housed a dry-goods dealer and is right at the foot of the city's old market. The rooms are elegantly furnished with four-poster mahogany beds, about half of them in Charleston's famous rice pattern style. Bonus: The hotel has one of the city's best restaurants. (Rates, $115-$230; telephone 800-845-7082.)

- The Vendue Inn is another small hotel. Started 18 years ago by Morton and Peggy Needle, the Vendue today has 45 rooms that occupy five old warehouses and office buildings over an entire city block overlooking the harbor and the city's new Waterfront Park. Excellent choice for dinner: The Library at Vendue. (Rates, $100-$230; telephone 800-845-7900.)

- The Bed & Breakfast at 27 State St. is much smaller than either the Planters Inn or the Vendue, and much more intimate. Operated by Joye Craven, an elegant woman who lives in an adjoining building, this B & B has but five rooms in two buildings, and is on a quiet street, away from the bustle of the market but in the heart of the city's galleries and restaurants. The decor is quiet and handsome; four of five of the rooms have kitchens. We'd be happy to establish residence here. (Rates, $95-$180; phone 803-722-4243.)

- The 1837 Bed & Breakfast and Tea Room is for those whose tastes run to the slightly funky. Owned and renovated by two artists, the B & B has but eight rooms, each eclectically decorated by Sherri Weaver and her husband, Richard Dunn. (Does the Feather Room appeal to you?) The couple had to strip the house all the way to the walls, and they admit they nearly gave up. Says Weaver: ``If you have a roach in your room [not uncommon even in the finest Charleston homes] I know it came in under the door because it didn't come in through those walls. I sealed the mortar myself!'' The tea room is a bit like visiting your grandmother's kitchen. (Rates, $59-$129; phone 803-723-7166.)

A good selection of B & Bs can be found through Historic Charleston Bed & Breakfast, a booking service for about 60 B & Bs in the area. Most are in homes that were built before 1860, and many have private entrances. They aren't necessarily cheap -- running from $80 to $195 a night -- but they are a good way to get a feel for how those SOB's -- Charleston's rich South of Broad -- live. The number: (800) 743-3583.

Back on Little Joe's piazza, my Mom was telling the story of another Charleston inn, the Four Mile House that stood on Old Meeting Street Road just across from her old Rosemont neighborhood. It is a story she, and all the kids of her generation, have told and retold to their own children for years.

This spooky old house was once a roadside tavern and inn run by Lavinia and John Fisher, and over the years guests would come and then mysteriously disappear. One day a traveler showed up with his dog, and after dinner he went to his room. But instead of going to bed, he put his dog on the bed and sat in a chair in the corner. And he waited.

Late that night, when everyone in the inn was asleep, a trap door opened under the bed, and the dog fell through to the cellar. The traveler, a detective who had been sent to investigate, found the old lady and her husband, knives in hand, waiting to kill and rob their guest. They were arrested and a search turned up a cellar full of human bones.

The Fishers were hanged on Feb. 18, 1820, but not before Lavinia turned to ask Dr. Richard Furman, the pastor of the First Baptist Church, if he had any messages for her to carry to hell. Lavinia was the first woman ever hanged in the United States, and her bones hung in Charleston's old city museum for years.

Or that's the story my Momma tells, anyway.

For more information on Charleston, call the visitors' bureau at (800) 868-8118.