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  • Episode 306: The Genesis of Market Street, 1783–1789

    Episode 306: The Genesis of Market Street, 1783–1789
    Aug 15 2025
    Market Street and its venerable public buildings exemplify the spirit of preservation and resilience in modern Charleston, but forgotten details of the site’s creation in the late eighteenth century shroud a troubled genesis. The city’s broadest thoroughfare was mostly underwater during its early years, and the site’s first edifice sheltered butchers only briefly before a distant political crisis unraveled its legal foundation.
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    26 Min.
  • Episode 305: The Waterfront Markets of Colonial Charleston

    Episode 305: The Waterfront Markets of Colonial Charleston
    Aug 1 2025
    In the spring of 1751, Governor James Glen described the Cooper River as “a kind of floating market,” hosting “numbers of canoes boats and pettyaguas that ply incessantly, bringing down the country produce to town.” In today’s Time Machine, let’s follow those watercraft to a series of market sites along the Charleston waterfront and explore the daily routine of vending fresh victuals during the community’s first century.
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    32 Min.
  • Episode 304: The Rise of Asphalt Roadways in Twentieth-Century Charleston

    Episode 304: The Rise of Asphalt Roadways in Twentieth-Century Charleston
    Jul 11 2025
    Modern travelers across the city and county of Charleston roll across a continuous ribbon of asphalt that facilitates an expanding cycle of population growth and cultural diversity. The roots of this blacktop conveyor belt extend back more than century, when a series of obscure political changes unleashed an unprecedented burst of infrastructure development that literally paved the road to Charleston’s present economic prosperity.
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    27 Min.
  • Episode 303: The Granite Roadways of Gilded-Age Charleston

    Episode 303: The Granite Roadways of Gilded-Age Charleston
    Jun 27 2025
    During the twilight years of the nineteenth century, radical changes to local thoroughfares helped the City of Charleston evolve from a declining seaport into a tidy modern metropolis. Uniform blocks of durable granite displaced most of the city’s lumpy cobblestone streets during the 1880s, after which the municipal government achieved mixed results with trials of several curious paving compounds.
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    24 Min.
  • Episode 302: Reconstructing the Streets of Post-Civil War Charleston

    Episode 302: Reconstructing the Streets of Post-Civil War Charleston
    May 30 2025
    Amidst the financial doldrums that followed the American Civil War, Charlestonians struggled to reconstruct their politics, rebuild their economy, and repair a neglected streetscape. Budget constraints compelled officials of the late 1860s and 1870s to perpetuate old-fashioned paving habits and to recycle outdated materials, but a few novel additions to the public right-of-way cheered the spirits of local drivers, pedestrians, and velocipedestrians.
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    26 Min.
  • Episode 301: Cobbling the Streets of Antebellum Charleston

    Episode 301: Cobbling the Streets of Antebellum Charleston
    May 16 2025
    Charleston’s cobblestone streets fascinate residents and visitors alike, inspiring visions of pirates and horse-drawn carriages rattling through ye olde colonial capital. Imported from Europe as ship ballast since the 1670s, these roundish stones provided the city’s earliest street covering, but the campaign to pave local thoroughfares with cobbles didn’t commence until the early 1800s. To better understand the traveling conditions endured by early Charlestonians, let’s take a stroll through paving history from colonial times to the American Civil War.
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    30 Min.
  • Episode 300: Frederick Douglass in 1888 Charleston

    Episode 300: Frederick Douglass in 1888 Charleston
    Jan 31 2025
    Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was a towering figure in the history of the United States, occupying the vanguard of the nation’s struggle for African-American civil rights during the nineteenth century. Near the end of his celebrated career, Douglass visited Charleston in the spring of 1888 as part of a lecture tour across several Southern states. His brief tenure in the Palmetto City inspired members of the local Black community, while their frank conversations challenged Douglass’ view of the state of American racial politics.
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    31 Min.
  • Episode 299: The Orange Economy of Colonial Charleston

    Episode 299: The Orange Economy of Colonial Charleston
    Jan 17 2025
    Orange trees and their delicious fruit are not native to North America, but they form a curious and poorly-remembered chapter in South Carolina’s early history. During the second quarter of the eighteenth century, British settlers planted thousands of orange trees in the Charleston area to capitalize on the fruit’s high commercial value. Although cold temperatures ended dreams of an orange bonanza before the American Revolution, vestiges of Charleston’s colonial citrus experiment survive on the modern landscape.
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    25 Min.