... and its Peculiar Institution

I mentioned in my previous post that houses in Charleston were typically built on narrow pieces of street frontage. But the more well-to-do citizens had lots that, if narrow, were often long. These lots were sometimes used for gardens ...


... but also for service buildings like laundries and kitchens (in the olden days, there was a rule that kitchens had to be in a separate building at least 18 feet from the main house, for fear of fire), and for slave quarters.

Here is one of the city's most famous mansions, the Aiken-Rhett House, home to one of South Carolina's governors before the civil war:


Out back are, to the left the kitchen and laundry, and to the right the carriage house. The slaves who worked in each building slept on the second floor, as did those who worked in the main house. All told there were about a dozen slaves in residence at this one mansion (the Aiken family also owned several hundred who worked on plantations elsewhere in the state):


Most of the mansion/museums we visited were quite matter-of-fact about the history of slavery and took pains to discuss the lives of the slaves as well as of the planters (though one tour guide we encountered couldn't bring herself to pronounce the word, referring to them as "servants" instead).

The slaves, of course, were freed after the Civil War, and the Aiken-Rhett family's fortunes declined rapidly. This story is well told inside the mansion, which unlike others in Charleston, hasn't been restored; rather, it was left pretty much as it was when the last of the Aikens moved out in 1975. It tells a true Southern Gothic tale: rooms gradually abandoned and sealed off, the ballroom converted to a bedroom, plaster cracking and paint peeling. Definitely worth a visit.