Charleston, once a month
Thank you.
I look forward to being part of your Charleston journey.
You’re on the list — and I don’t take that lightly. One email a month, written by me: what is actually happening in the market, a neighborhood or a house worth a second look, and the occasional design detail I can’t stop thinking about. No listing dumps. No noise.
One small thing first
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link inside. It takes a second, and until you do, I can’t send you anything. If it isn’t there in a few minutes, have a look in your spam folder — and drag it to your inbox so we start off on the right foot.
While you’re here
Four reasons Charleston looks the way it does
I sell and design houses in a city where almost every visible decision has a reason behind it. These four explain most of what you’ll notice walking the peninsula.
The city that moved
Charles Town was founded in 1670 on the west bank of the Ashley River, at a spot called Albemarle Point. Within a decade the settlers gave up on it and moved across the water to the peninsula between the Ashley and the Cooper — deeper harbor, better breeze, easier to defend. Everything you picture when you picture Charleston has been standing on that second choice ever since.
single
house
A house turned sideways on purpose
Charleston’s signature house is one room wide, with its narrow end to the street and a long porch — a piazza — running down the side. It reads as an architectural quirk. It’s climate engineering. Turning the house sideways lets the long elevation face the prevailing southwest breeze, and the piazza shades those windows through the worst of a Lowcountry afternoon.
People still build this way here. Not out of nostalgia — because it works.
The bolts in the walls
Look at the sides of older houses downtown and you’ll find iron discs, stars, and crosses set into the brick. Those are earthquake bolts — the visible ends of long rods threaded through the buildings to tie them back together after the 1886 earthquake, one of the most powerful ever recorded on the East Coast.
They look like ornament now. They were structural triage.
The first of its kind in America
In October 1931 Charleston passed a zoning ordinance that drew a boundary around part of the peninsula, called it the Old and Historic Charleston District, and created a Board of Architectural Review to govern what could be changed within it. It was the first historic district protected by local law anywhere in the United States.
That single ordinance is why the peninsula still looks like itself — and why renovating here involves more conversations, and more patience, than renovating anywhere else. I’d argue it’s worth it.
Start with the guide
Where to eat, how the neighborhoods actually feel, what to ask about schools, and a seven-day plan for working out where you fit.