Free previewStop 3 of Charleston Walking Tour: Rainbow Row to the Battery
The Church the Government Ordered Built
You're standing at the corner of Broad and Meeting, the crossing Charlestonians call the Four Corners of Law. Look at the white church on the corner, St. Michael's, and find the two-story portico with its row of plain Tuscan columns. When it went up, it was the first of its size in colonial America.
The nickname for this intersection came surprisingly late, and from an unlikely source. Robert Ripley, the man behind Ripley's Believe It or Not!, coined it. City Hall stands on one corner for city law, the county courthouse on another, and a federal post office and courthouse on a third. St. Michael's holds the fourth, for the law of the church.
That last corner made more literal sense here than you might expect.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 3 of Charleston Walking Tour: Rainbow Row to the Battery (3 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
