Free previewStop 7 of Charleston Walking Tour: Rainbow Row to the Battery
A Front-Row Seat for the War
You're on East Battery, right on the water, and the tall house at number 21 is the Edmondston-Alston House. Look at the side that faces the harbor, where the porches stack one above the other. Locals call them piazzas. Now turn around and look out across the water toward the mouth of the harbor. Out there, low on the horizon, is Fort Sumter. Hold those two things in your mind, the porch and the fort, because this story runs between them.
The house came first. A merchant named Charles Edmondston built it around 1825, right at the water's edge. A little over ten years later it passed to Charles Alston, a rice planter, who gave it the grander look you see now. The museum here is plain about who lived and worked on this property: people both free and enslaved.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 7 of Charleston Walking Tour: Rainbow Row to the Battery (2 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
