Supplement to
Charleston and Savannah:
The Rise, Fall, and Reinvention of
Two Rival Cities

Introduction

This supplemental volume provides in-depth and specialized information for readers seeking additional detail in specific subject areas. Having such information available online has the additional benefit of allowing for regular updates as well as intermittent revisions based on reader comments.

Book publishing continues to change dramatically. E-books revolutionized reading options; print-on-demand (POD) publishing eliminated the need for large print runs, making books appealing to small, niche markets more feasible to publish; self-publishing placed new authors directly in the marketplace. Readers are able to connect with authors and publishers through websites and social media. Books are now dynamic projects that allow interaction with readers to influence future editions, and even to crowdsource enhancements to a book. This supplemental “volume” is the point of tangency between author, publisher, and reader.

Section 1 presents a lengthier account of transatlantic trade that was possible in the principal volume. The story of Charleston and Savannah is deeply embedded in the exploration, trade, and exploitation that linked four continents. To ignore this “deep history” is to willfully chose to understand only superficial aspects of the two cities and the region they founded.

Section 2 adds detail to another powerful influence shaping the story of Charleston and Savannah, the Lowcountry environment. Section 3 continues the discussion of environment with additional information on hurricane history and vulnerability.

It might appear that these first three sections assert the worn theses of economic and environmental determinism. The reader might ask, “Isn’t culture at least equally important?” The answer offered here is, “No, cultural traditions were notable but not as fundamental as economic and environmental conditions.” In the book, the story of Charleston and Savannah was portrayed as one that was built by a blend of actors from many cultures. The blend became a new culture, sui generis, that established the Lowcountry as a powerful influence on the larger culture region.

It is generally understood that the Scots Irish were a powerful influence, and if one is describing the South as a whole that generalization is solid. But the Lowcountry was, if anything, a counter to Scots Irish influence. The pretense of its aristocratic and oligarchic elite was one of cultural descendance from English Cavaliers, but the reality was that despite all the pretense of a few Lowcountry culture was an entirely new and rich blend.

Section 4 provides additional information on historic preservation and historical resources. Both cities are widely perceived as historical cities that have done more than most to preserve their heritage. A preservation movement that began with a focus on old buildings and their architectural character has expanded into the areas of neighborhood, cultural, and environmental preservation. The scope of those initiative is so wide as to be impractical to cover thoroughly in the print edition of the book.

Section 5 on demographics includes much more statistical information than was practical to include in the book. The 2020 census, with all its difficulties, eventually produced a wealth of comparative information for the two cities and the Lowcountry region. Economic data from the 2020 census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics are found in Section 6.

Section 7 explores the challenging subject of affordable housing. The success each city has enjoyed in promoting tourism has come at a price. Housing has become expensive, and the service sector labor force has largely been priced out of the areas where they work. Working class neighborhoods are being gentrified, altering the character of both cities and creating new dynamics in the economy that may be unsustainable.

Sections 8 and 9 cover higher education and military installations, both significant contributors to the local economy, as well as important institutions in defining the character of both cities.

1. Transatlantic Trade and the Heritage of Slavery

Charleston and Savannah found an economic niche and prospered though their participation in the Transatlantic trade. For nearly two centuries, in the case of Charleston, slave trading was central to the economy.

The following tables provide supplemental information for readers who wish to know more about this subject. Those who wish to explore the topic further are encouraged to begin with, Eltis and Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The database associated with the atlas, a rich source of additional information, can be found online at https://digitalscholarship.emory.edu/expertise/projectlist.html.

England did not become an active participant in transatlantic trade until the seventeenth century, two centuries after the Portuguese opened the Atlantic to intercontinental trade. Although enslaved people were in the Virginia Colony as early as 1619, sugar plantations on the Caribbean Island of Barbados were the nation’s first lucrative colonial venture tied to slavery. The Barbados experience became a model for enslavement of African labor that influenced Carolina, and which Carolina in turn projected into other colonies beginning with Georgia.

Historians distinguish between slave societies and societies with slaves. Barbados and Carolina were both in the former category. Their economies were dependent on slavery, they were culturally organized around the institution of slavery, and at some point, the enslaved outnumbered the enslavers, requiring formalized tyranny of the latter over the former.

The Lowcountry experience with slavery is central to understanding American history, but also central to understanding the nation’s position in the world today. As the nation broadened its concept of equality and chipped away at vestiges of slavery and its successor institutions (Black Codes, Jim Crow, segregation, etc.) it stood before the world as a beacon of democracy and opportunity. The rise of China, the broader resurgence of authoritarianism, and fracturing politics in the United States have dimmed the beacon of Western liberal democracy.

The lingering, fracturing effects of racism in America undermine America’s strength and international leadership. The concept of “race” has not withstood the scientific scrutiny of modern genomic research, but it remains entrenched in American culture nevertheless. White American understanding of Africa and Africaness remains linked to past ideologies contrived by Lowcountry “fire eaters” and others to justify slavery. Dislodging from that past should be a national project as Americans envision a more unified future as well as a continuing model role in world leadership.

The African Diaspora

Charleston was the principal point of entry of Africans into North America, with Savannah being a major player as well in the African diaspora. A diaspora is the scattering of people from their homeland, and the African diaspora was one of the largest in human history. The transatlantic slave trade resulted in 12.5 million Africans being relocated to the Americas. The largest number, 5.8 million, were transported to Brazil and other Portuguese territories. The second largest destination was the Caribbean, where 4.0 million Africans were transported primarily to English, French, and Dutch colonies. Only about 390,000 enslaved Africans were transported to mainland North America.1

The primary ports of disembarkation in the present-day United States were Charleston, which received 211,000 slaves, and the Chesapeake Bay area, which received 129,000. Secondary ports were in the Northeast, where there were 27,000 disembarkations, and the Gulf Coast, including New Orleans, where there were only 22,000.2

South Carolina and the Gulf acquired many slaves from the Caribbean rather than directly from Africa. The small Caribbean Island of Barbados, for example, which received 493,000 enslaved Africans to work its sugar plantations, eventually relocated many to South Carolina and the Gulf, as well as elsewhere in the Caribbean. The early development of harsh slave oversight in Barbados strongly influenced the nature of plantation management in South Carolina, which in turn influenced the character of the plantation system and its associated political culture across the Deep South.3

The vast majority of Africans transported to the New World, 12 million, were from West and West-central Africa. Only about a half million were taken from southern and eastern Africa. English-speaking Ghana is a popular destination for African Americans seeking to learn about their roots. The country maintains several European-build castles dating to the 1500s that were ports of embarkation in the slave trade. French-speaking Senegal is also a popular destination because of its historic sites and relative ease of access from the United States.4

Although British North America and later the United States received relatively few African slaves directly from Africa, indirect growth from Caribbean migrations greatly added to the population. The United States now has the second largest African diaspora population in the world, making it the sixth largest country in the world with an African-descendent population.

America is part of a worldwide diaspora of opportunity-seeking people moving from the developing world to the developed world. More Africans have voluntarily emigrated from sub-Saharan countries to the United States than were forcibly taken during the Atlantic Slave Trade. The number has doubled each decade since 1970. While African emigrants make up a small percentage of total emigration, it is sufficient to create enclaves of African communities in many cities and project an influence on the larger culture. These thriving communities can be seen as an asset in establishing mutually beneficial relationships with African countries.5

Immigration from the Caribbean constitutes an even larger form of influence from diaspora populations. Half of all Black immigrants in the United States are from this neighboring region, with 1,268,000 from Jamaica and Haiti alone. Educational institutions with comprehensive curricula on the African diaspora and the modern African-descended world add much needed understanding across the general population that reduce racial prejudice and misunderstanding.6

The Origin of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Portugal was the first European nation to found a global empire on sea power. It began when Henry the Navigator developed a highly maneuverable ocean-going ship, the caravel, capable of sailing upwind. Henry’s caravels explored the Atlantic, reaching the westernmost point in Africa, the Cape Verde peninsula, in 1445. From there Portuguese expeditions pressed forward into sub-Saharan Africa. By 1500, they had also reached South America, which lies only 1600 miles west of Cape Verde (half the distance between New York and London).

Portugal was initially interested in Africa as a source of gold. A lucrative trans-Saharan trade had existed for over a thousand years in which gold, salt, and slaves were exported from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe. In a well-documented hajj of 1324 taken by Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, the quantity of gold distributed as gifts to royalty and poor alike depressed its price for a decade.

A profitable gold trade was established in the early 1480s at Elmina in present-day Ghana. Christopher Columbus, who lived in Lisbon at the time, was one of those trading in the region. Elmina castle built by the Portuguese was probably the first European structure built south of the Sahara.

Eventually sugar emerged as Portugal’s chief export and the driver of Atlantic economy. Sugar was in great demand in Europe, and Portugal supplied most of it from its plantations in the Atlantic islands of the the Madeiras, and Sao Tome and Principe in the Gulf of Guinea. By 1490, Madeira was the largest producer of sugar in the Atlantic world, growing both sugarcane and sugar beets. Portugal dominated the Atlantic economy for over a century.

Initially, the slavery was incidental to Portuguese trade. Small numbers of slaves were taken to Lisbon and to Madeira to work on the sugar plantations. Once the Portuguese began settling Brazil the demand for slave labor increased dramatically. The chart of slave embarkations shows a dramatic rise in the slave trade as a result of the sugar industry in Brazil. Of the 5.8 million slaves taken by Portugal, 4.8 million were taken to Brazil between 1501 and 1866 when the slave trade was prohibited. The chart reflects the take-off of the sugar industry in Brazil in the 1600s, followed by mining, then the growth of a more broad-based economy in the large colony. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last nation to do so.

Dutch traders also played a pivotal role in the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. The Dutch West India Company seized Brazil’s large sugar producing region near the mouth of the Amazon, and their large-scale practices became a model for the British, French, and Spanish in the Caribbean. The Dutch West India Company was also the most advanced trading concern in the world, developing modern institutions of finance, credit, and insurance. The Dutch were deeply involved as English investors established a sugar industry on Barbados in the early 1600s.7

During the seventeenth century northern European powers challenged Portuguese and Spanish dominance in the Caribbean. The Portuguese were pushed out of the region as they split up the portion of the northern coast of South America not controlled by Spain. By the end of the century England had emerged as the Spain’s chief rival in the region.

The sugar monoculture dominated the island economies, while mining as well as agriculture were present in Caribbean coastal regions of South and Central America. The feudalistic nature of investment in the region fueled demand for African slaves. In Barbados, England’s first venture in the Caribbean, established a model for slave dependency. In 1635 during initial development there were 985 enslaved people on the island, fewer than in New England and Virginia, although the numbers there were also small. By the end of the century there were 40,000 slaves in Barbados, far more than in all of British North America.8

To fully understand the impact of the Atlantic slave trade one must not only process the volume of its human cargo and the origin and destination of those enslaved people, but one must also understand the hellishness of the practice. Conditions on slave ships were so horrendous that death rates in transit typically exceeded ten percent. Africans were cuffed and chained tightly together for a voyage of two month or more, arriving sick, emaciated, and humiliated. Slave merchants and their customers were able to carry on their practice without moral qualms by stripping Africans of their humanity, then treating them like animals.

Even though burdened with the ultimate disadvantage of being literally and figuratively stripped of all dignity and possessions, Africans brought far more to America than has been generally recognized.

Slavery in North America

Slavery in British and French North America became established in the seventeenth century, but it was a secondary source of labor for the early colonists. Colonists supplied their own labor until the 1690s, often supplemented with that of indentured servants. The small number of slaves in the colonies during the seventeenth century was almost equally Native American and African. In the early eighteenth century African slavery became the dominant form of labor in three areas, Virginia, South Carolina, and Louisiana.

Spanish Florida was a counterpoint to British South Carolina, offering freedom and land to escaped slaves. The goal was not humanitarian, but rather a means of destabilizing territory they had long claimed. New England was a similar counterpoint to Virginia, and its legislatures began abolishing slavery in the Revolutionary period, consistent with calls for liberty. There were more slaves in the Mid-Atlantic region, but Pennsylvania and New York led the way with abolition in the same time frame as New England. By the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, slavery was illegal in all northern states except Maryland, where it was abolished in 1864.

Virginia was the first colony to become reliant on slave labor. It acquired the largest number of slaves, but had the smallest proportion in the population. Most slaves were purchased to work the tobacco plantations of the colony’s slaveowning elite. Virginia’s leaders were never entirely comfortable with the expanding institution of slavery. Jefferson called for gradual abolition and the House of Delegates debated its future. Some were concerned about the morality of slavery, but most were concerned about the threat to security. Jefferson and others promoted the idea of dispersion, and Virginia became an exporter of slaves to other colonies. It continued the practice after the Revolution, eventually selling slaves to meet the burgeoning demand of King Cotton in the Deep South. The horrendous working conditions in the Lower Mississippi led to the phrase “sold down the river.”

South Carolina was founded with a constitution that provided for slavery. Carolina’s founders, however, did not anticipate that the colony would evolve into a slave-dependent society. They envisioned slaves making up part of the labor force on larger plantations owned by a small nobility. When slaveowners from Barbados arrived in Carolina they altered the original plan and created a society dependent on slavery. A rice monoculture replaced sugar and demand for labor was high. By 1710 there were more enslaved people in the province than free persons. Within a few decades the vast majority of the population was composed of enslaved Africans, as it had been on Barbados. Repressive measures were required for so few to maintain absolute rule over so many. The harsh “Carolina way” spread across the Deep South and became the model of choice for King Cotton.9

Slavery came later to Louisiana. The French introduced African slavery to the colony in 1710, but the number of enslaved people remained small during the colonial period compared to Carolina and Virginia. When Spain regained control of the region in 1763, they enslaved fewer Africans than the British. The Louisiana Purchase made the territory part of the United States in 1803, not long after the invention of the cotton gin. A few years later the steamboat New Orleans was introduced to the Mississippi, completing a commercial revolution in the region. Cotton and sugarcane became major crops and the demand for slaves by plantation owners increased rapidly in the early nineteenth century. Few slaves in Louisiana came directly from Africa; most were purchased domestically.10

Virginia was the principal source of slaves for Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Lower Mississippi. Although more slaves were imported into South Carolina than Virginia, mortality was higher in the Lowcountry and the birth rate was lower (in many years there were more deaths than births) due in part to much harsher conditions. Virginia’s natural population increase averaged three percent per year, a rate of growth sufficient to double the population in less than 25 years.11

Large plantations worked by slaves invited reliance on specialized crops such as tobacco, rice, and sugarcane. Economies of scale associated with monocultures dependent on slave labor created a self-reinforcing trend that came to characterize the South. This model eventually led to the archetype of monocultures, King Cotton.

A New Global Economy

The transatlantic slave trade became a major piece in a new global economy. All the players in the slave trade extended their empires around the globe, fueled in part by the success of the Atlantic trade systems. Ancient overland trading systems were largely replaced by sea routes the more efficiently linked Europe with America, Africa, and Asia.

The trans-Saharan trade between North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans that had thrived for over a thousand years withered in the new global economy. Sub-Saharan nations that flanked the Sahara for centuries traded gold, salt, and slaves to nations of the Mediterranean for finished products such as cloth. The smaller nations and chiefdoms of coastal West Africa that supplied gold to the nations of the Sahel were minor factors in the regional economy.

With the arrival of Europeans along the coast of West Africa the ancient regional economy flipped over. The nations of the Sahel declined, and the minor states on the coast became more powerful as a result of trade with Europeans. Those emerging nations were short lived. Eager to stake claim to Africa, Europeans carved up the continent into colonies.

Some nations effectively resisted. The Ashanti Empire contained British advances for over a century. Colonial administration that followed during the nineteenth century weakened established nations by seizing power and often dividing ethnic groups by colonial boundaries. Thus the Ewe of the Gold Coast were split between English-administered Ghana and French-administered Togo.

The Industrial Revolution that began in England in the late eighteenth century sealed European dominance on the Atlantic World and allowed historians to feel secure in writing of a world created by Europeans. A short span of history can seem like an eternity to those living through it, and historians wrote as if the period of European dominance was as it always had been and always will remain.

Historians have cited the dominance of Europe and European-America in the Atlantic World as justification for Eurocentric public education and historiography. But the complexities of the modern world, where tens of thousands of people are on one continent today and another tomorrow, requires information and education that provide a more accurate accounting of historical realities. The greater than recognized contribution of Africans and indigenous Americans must be part of that more complete education.

Slavery and the Civil War

The northern states had abolished slavery by the time the Civil War began in 1861. However, substantial populations of enslaved people remained in the border states of Kentucky (20%), Maryland (13%), and Missouri (10%). The Upper South, consisting of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee had an enslaved population of 30 percent. This stood in sharp contrast to the Deep South, where nearly 50 percent of the population was enslaved. In absolute numbers, the South held 4.0 million people in slavery at the beginning of the Civil War; 2.0 million of those enslaved people lived in the Deep South.

For decades, the mythology of the Lost Cause held that secession was rooted in the higher principle of states’ rights and that slavery was not the central issue. Statements by the leaders of secession made at the time of secession, readily available now through the internet, reveal that slavery was the core issue. If one argued today that real estate investors are principally concerned with the higher principles of real estate law, and only secondarily interested in profiting through the real estate industry, such an argument would readily seem absurd. States’ rights was the legal framework seen as protecting property in slaves and the great profits they yielded in the agrarian South.

Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States, stated it clearly in his Cornerstone Address delivered in Savannah on March 21, 1861: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”12

Governor A. B. Moore of Alabama identified a need for consultation among the states to protect the institution of slavery: “… the slave-holding States have a common interest in the institution of slavery, and must be common sufferers in its overthrow….”13

South Carolina was more subtle than Stephens or Moore, initially couching their declaration of causes in constitutionalism and states’ rights. Eventually it got to the point:

An increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.14

Georgia was less subtle:

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.15

Mississippi, led by South Carolinians, got straight to the point in the opening paragraph:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.16

Texas was also unambiguous on the issue:

She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?17

With the evidence inaccessible to most people for more than a century, it was possible to manufacture a revisionist perspective on the cause of the Civil War and southern agrarian society. Many historians fell into line, perpetuating Lost Cause mythology. Prominent among those were associates of the Dunning School, named for Columbia University professor William Archibald Dunning. The Reconstruction historian Eric Foner described the school as a structural support for the Jim Crow system. In recent decades, historians of the Civil War and Reconstruction have had more success in educating the public with factual information instead of mythology. Recently, however, headwinds against unvarnished history have grown strong, particularly where “race” enters the picture. A new political correctness has emerged characterized by vitriolic opposition to examinations of White supremacy in American history.

Reconstruction: A Missed Opportunity

One can argue that southern Whites played the long game and ultimately won the Civil War, a struggle that never ended. It lost the military war and gave up the quest for an empire of slavery, but it won the war over democratic reconstruction and returned to a regime of White supremacy. The losers on the battlefield launched a quiet and sustained effort to rebuild the image of the South consistent with White racist mythology.

In front of county courthouses across the South statues of Confederate soldiers tell the story of a region unwilling to leave behind a legacy of White supremacy. The compulsion to tell history from the southern perspective extended beyond the Confederacy. In the border state of Kentucky, which supplied far more soldiers to the North than the South, symbols of the Confederacy came to dominate the landscape. Monuments dedicated to the Confederacy outnumber those dedicated to the Union sixty-four to eleven. Everyone unfortunately knows that the widespread displays of the Confederate battle flag were seldom effectively challenged until the jarring mass murder in Charleston in 2015.19

The weary and wary northern victors of the Civil War graciously allowed the South to go down the road of historical revisionism and self-celebration, unaware that road would lead to the restoration of the racial caste system the South had fought to preserve.

It is said that history is written by the victors, but the victors in war are not always the ultimate victors. In South Africa the Boers were defeated by the English in 1902, but the Boers, or Afrikaners, quietly rebuilt their legacy and returned to power in 1947. The mechanism through which they recovered their legacy and influence was known as the broederbond. Apartheid was instituted and prevailed until the first open and multi-racial elections were held in 1992.

During Reconstruction, the period that extended from issuance of the end of the Civil War to 1877, the nation amended the Constitution and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to right the wrong of slavery. Those initiatives were essentially overturned by the South’s quiet rebellion against them, depriving most African Americans of a legal claim to equality and basic rights of citizenship, such as the right to vote.

The Constitutional amendments ratified during Reconstruction were the best opportunity the nation ever had to rid itself of the most debilitating effects of structural racism. They offered an uncomfortable period of adjustment required to shake the populous free of obsolete belief systems and make fundamental societal changes. During that period the South was forced to accept a fundamental restructuring of race relations under an amended Constitution brought into alignment with the principle of equality espoused in the Declaration of Independence and at the core of the Founding Fathers’ Enlightenment philosophy.

On December 6, 1865 Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. The following year, it enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which affirmed that all citizens, including former slaves, were entitled to equal protection under the law. Then in 1868 and 1970, respectively, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were ratified, guaranteeing civil rights for all Americans and affirming that the right to vote could not be denied on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Sixteen Black candidates won election to the 41st Congress in 1868.

Although four million Blacks were freed by the war and then made equal under the law, racism remained deeply entrenched in the southern culture. The new laws of the Reconstruction Era neither ended old prejudices nor their political expression. Ultimately, the South reunified around a system of racial segregation that mirrored as much as possible the earlier system of slavery. The new Jim Crow era of racial repression was made possible by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which required the complete withdrawal of federal troops from the South, allowing the Ku Klux Klan, White police and militias, and lynch mobs once again to suppress the freedoms and Constitutional rights of the Black population.

The number of Blacks in Congress began declining in the 1870s, dropping to none at the turn of the century as the full force of Jim Crow took effect. A revival of the Reconstruction goal of empowering African Americans with equal rights emerged, and the struggle began anew to assert the rights supposedly gupanamaaranteed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 once again affirmed legal equality for African Americans. And once again, laws did not change personal belief systems or their political expression. A political house built to preserve slavery then remodeled to accommodate segregation and White privilege retained its same basic architecture and furnishings.

A total of 15 African Americans represented all states in Reconstruction Era and the early post-Reconstruction period from 1870 to 1887. As is evident in the tables, there were large gaps of complete lack of representation, particularly during the Jim Crow era.

The strains of an unfinished Civil War and an aborted Reconstruction became all too evident with a Black president elected to the White House in 2008. Pressure had been building since the 1960s, abetted by the Republican Southern Strategy, which sought to make inroads in a region that had been solidly Democratic since the Reconstruction Era. The new Republican emphasis on states’ rights appealed to southern voters who retained powerful cultural memories of the federal interventions of the 1860s and 1960s. In a complete flip-flop, the South rapidly became nearly as solidly Republican as it had been Democratic. The reversal of party polarity was due entirely to deep-seated White racial anxieties, a fundamental shift brought about by the Southern Strategy according to Lee Atwater, one of its architects. Atwater candidly admitted that race was at the core of Republican success in the South, but noting that race was no longer mentioned directly, as most people preferred not to think of themselves as racists.

New issues were constructed on top of overtly racial issues to make southern race-based conservatism compatible with a less overtly racist time. The banner of states’ rights softened the harsh features of slavery, playing it down as a minor issue in the Civil War, and thereby erasing the trail of racism leading to the present. And up to a point about twenty years ago, the fog of southern mythology surrounding the Civil War was sufficient to obscure the role of slavery and racism in the political history of the South.

Southern mythology remains an enormous impediment to moving beyond racism in the region and across the nation. Because so many White southerners have preferred to perpetuate mythology rather than deal with reality the region has never come to grips with the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and persistent racism. Elsewhere, many other Americans have tacitly come to believe the tenets of southern mythology that White southerners have assertively hawked to the nation.

But the fog of mythology is hard to sustain in the digital age. Ready access to official historical records in digital format allows anyone who can conduct an internet search to find formal declarations on the cause of the Civil War. It was about slavery. And slavery was justified by racist rhetoric, which remained firmly in the minds of southerners generations after the Civil War.

In the fog of southern mythology, secession was about liberty and states’ rights, never mind the absurdity of liberty conferring property rights in human beings. Yet in the speeches and declarations arguing for secession, it was opposition to southern slavery by the North that stands out as the common theme. The “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union” cites the “hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery.” In Mississippi, a relatively young state under the sway of South Carolinians, the leaders of secession declared, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.” Texas was equally blunt, declaring that “protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race” justified secession.

Historical revisionists fueling southern mythology still argue that secession was about “liberty.” They are referring to White liberty and White privilege, not the Constitutional rights of Blacks. In South Carolina and Mississippi that meant holding on to the privileged right of a White minority to rule a Black majority well into the twentieth century. White lives matter, Black lives do not, in this southern conception of “liberty.”

Southern historical revisionists point out that the North went along with a Constitutional Amendment securing the slaveholding rights of the South in an effort to preserve the union, but that the South was intent on securing “liberty” for its people—that is, White people, mainly the slaveholding plantation elite. The revisionist claim is that the South rejected the amendment because its principal concern was freedom, not slavery. But if freedom was for Whites alone, then it amounted to freedom to retain the Antebellum institution of racial hierarchy. For southerners, the Amendment failed to force northern states to return runaway slaves and to protect southern grand ambitions for westward expansion. In the end the purpose of invoking “liberty” and “states’ rights” was to preserve southern slave society.

The term “slave society” is used to make an additional point. In southern mythology, the South was merely doing what nations throughout history had done, and what had been done in the North—using slave labor. This trick of deflection ignores that fact that few nations were ever built on a foundation of chattel slavery like the South. Rome was one, but the North never had such a reliance and by the time of the Civil War virtually all slaves in the United States were in the South. Nor were the nations of Africa that were engaged in slave trading slave societies, as southerners still claim. They were societies with slaves, but not wholly dependent on them.

There have been many societies with slaves throughout history, but few developed the magnitude of slaveholding found in the South. Census data for 1860 offers a clear picture of how utterly dependent the South was on the institution of slavery. The enslaved population in South Carolina was 57 percent of the total; in Mississippi it was 55 percent; in Louisiana it was 47 percent; in Alabama, 45 percent; in Florida and Georgia, 44 percent. Four million people were enslaved in the South, none in the North. The percentage of families owning slaves was highest in the Deep South, with South Carolina and Mississippi being the highest at 46 and 49 percent respectively. The figure in the Upper South was 25 percent. The Deep South had more slaves concentrated on large plantations than the Upper South, and it was the plantation elite who led the way to secession.

It is a gross distortion of history to portray the continued subjugation of enslaved Blacks as a quest for liberty by southern Whites. However, a more pernicious aspect of southern mythology affecting the lives of people today is the portrayal of Blacks by the political and intellectual leaders of the South as inferior beings who were fortunate beneficiaries of the paternalistic southern way of life. As the South became a slave society it was forced to justify itself to a nation that began with John Locke’s proposition that “slavery is so great an evil” (the first works of Two Treatises of Government) and embedded that idea in the Declaration of Independence. The Founders, like Locke, believed that “all men are created equal” in a state of nature, so to accommodate that belief southerners had to devise a belief system that exclude Blacks from “men.”

The southern White oligarchy did this through dubious anthropological and Biblical claims. Africans were lesser men who in their natural state were savages and cannibals, incapable of building a civilization. They were descended from the cursed children of Ham, whereas the Anglo-Saxon “race” was a modern chosen people. After Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 created an alliance of slaves and White indentured servants, the oligarchs conceded sufficient power to poor Whites to coopt their loyalty. Limited power sharing was followed by a shared racial ideology of White superiority.

Southerners had to engage in self-delusion to build this race-based belief system. Before the South was fully evolved into a slave society, James Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia and an early abolitionist, wrote at length on African history depicting a very different Africa from the mythological portrayal in the South. His account was based on reading the accounts of scholars who had firsthand knowledge of the continent. Had southerners been interested in a true account of Africa they could have read Mungo Park’s 1799 Travels into the Interior Districts of Africa, an account of the pre-colonial nation-states of West Africa. Factual information was available to southern intellectual and political leaders, but they constructed an alternative reality that supported their system of slavery.

The southern mythology of Black racial inferiority remains in the cultural memory promoting racist views within the White population today. As a result of the assumption of inferiority, virtually no effort is made to include African history in school curricula. The assumption among Whites was and is that there is no cultural record for Africans and African Americans comparable to that of Europeans or Asians. The advent of Negro History Week in 1926 and Black History Month fifty years later came about only through African American advocacy, and it remains an outlier in the teaching of history. Given that Blacks constituted a majority or substantial minority in many states throughout American history, the lack of attention to the subject is telling.

Recent African history, no doubt, has been chaotic and unimpressive to Americans. Looking past the shallow veneer of the new nations of Africa and predecessor colonial states, one finds a fascinating history. Looking at West Africa in particular, from where many Black Americans can trace their heritage, one can find two fascinating epochs. The most recent was that of Islamic influence between 700 BC and 1700 AD, a thousand-year period when trans-Saharan trade built powerful nations with advanced institutions comparable to or exceeding those of Europe.

Earlier West African civilizations are even more interesting from an anthropological perspective. Americans learn that the cradle of civilization was the Fertile Crescent extending from the Nile River to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Agriculture and civilization emerged from this region and similar events occurred in India and China. Americans do not learn that there was an early “fertile crescent” along the Niger River in West Africa.

In reality, the slaveholding elite and the broader White population tied to the plantation economy owed their wealth to a massive, enslaved labor force. A thin slice of population educated at northern institutions and in Europe provided a veneer of sophistication and gentility among the plantation elite in an otherwise vastly uneducated and impoverished society. Inequality, weak educational institutions, and terroristic repression were so pronounced that only farfetched racial mythology could justify it. Historians and explorers had long before shown the existence of advanced societies in West Africa, where some of the world’s earliest civilizations took root in the fertile crescent of the Niger River. Works such as for example, offered a true picture of Africa, but it was knowledge southerners carefully avoided.

The data to support the claim of utter dependence on enslaved labor is readily accessible, and it is overwhelming. The personal and agricultural wealth of slaveholders in the South in 1860 was fourteen times greater than that of non-slaveholders; the region’s enslaved population increased from less than a million in 1790 to nearly four million when the Civil War began; so important was slavery to King Cotton that one million slaves from the Upper South were “sold down the river” to work in the cotton belt. In the Deep South, three-quarters of the state legislators and all of the governors were slaveholders at the time of secession.

Before the digital age, such statistics were well known to scholars, but mostly inaccessible to the general public. Any careful researcher now has access to that information. Of course, there has been a proliferation of websites using spurious sources to promote a particular agenda, so it is easy to say there is more fog not less. But the speed with which the Confederate battle flag was confirmed to the public as a symbol of White supremacy after the Charleston church massacre was due to the internet. Print moves slower than images, but on the internet it still moves rapidly, and so it is unlikely the old mythology can withstand fact-based public scrutiny much longer.

The American Civil War occurred between 1861 and 1865, but a war of political cultures, one founded on slave labor another founded on wage labor, has fractured the nation through its history. Research on political culture across several scholarly disciplines has shown that since colonial times America has had three primary political cultures. A “moralistic” culture came out of New England and the traditions of the early Puritans; a commercially oriented, “individualistic” culture arose from the Dutch influence centered in New York; and a third, slave-based, “traditionalistic” culture arose in the South. The fracture between the first two and the third is the nation’s Achilles tendon.

Recommended Reading: Transatlantic Trade, New World Slavery, African Diaspora, Civil War, Heritage of Slavery

Bowne, Eric E., and Crystal A. Bowne. “Natives, Women, Debtors, and Slaves: Christian Priber’s American Utopia.” Native South. 2018.

Connah, G.,African Civilizations: An Archaeological Perspective.

Curtin, Philip. African History: From Earliest Times to Independence. 1995.

Dunn, Richard S. Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the English Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713. 1972.

“Dunning School.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning_School

Elliott, E. N., ed. Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments: Comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright on This Important Subject. Augusta, Ga: Pritchard, Abbott & Loomis, 1860. Retrieved through Project Guttenberg.

Eltis, David, and David Richardson. Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. 2010.

Fields-Black, Edda L. Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora. 2008.

Foner, Eric. Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction. 1993.

Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction. 2010.

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863–1877.

Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717. 2002.

Grant, Douglas. The Fortunate Slave: An Illustration of African Slavery in the Early Eighteenth Century. 1968.

Hilliard, Sam Bowers. Atlas of Antebellum Southern Agriculture. 1984.

Jones, Jacqueline. A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America.

Mauser, Bruce L. A Slaving Voyage to Africa and Jamaica: The Log of the Sandown, 1793–1794. 2002.

Miller, Joseph C., ed. The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History. 2015.

Moore, Francis. Travels Into the Interior Parts of Africa. 1738.

Stuart, Andrea. Sugar in the Blood: A Family’s Story of Slavery and Empire. 2013.

Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800.

Weisberger, Bernard A. “The Dark and Bloody Ground of Reconstruction Historiography.” Journal of Southern History. 1959.

Williams, T. Harry. “An Analysis of Some Reconstruction Attitudes.” Journal of Southern History. 1946.

Wood, Peter H. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. 1974.

2. The Lowcountry Context

In the minds of its citizens, South Carolina has long been divided into three regions: the Upcountry, the Midlands, and the Lowcountry. The division was based on physical geography. In the traditional conception, the Lowcountry occupies the coastal plain, extending from the coastline to the Fall Line, which runs through the state from Aiken County on the Savannah River to Chesterfield County, abutting the North Carolina state line. As the central part of the state developed, it attained its own identity and became the Midlands. The Lowcountry then came to be identified with the coastal counties and those inland adjacent counties with close ties to the coastal population and economy.

In its narrowest definition the Lowcountry includes the counties of Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton, and Jasper, terminating at the Savannah River. More often the area also includes the counties of Berkeley, Dorchester, and Georgetown. The core of the Lowcountry is Charleston County, the most populous county in the region. Although Savannah, being in Georgia, is not included in either definition of the Lowcountry, the city has close historical ties as well as contemporary cultural and economic ties.

In Lowcountry Hurricanes: Three Centuries of Storms at Sea and Ashore the historian Walter Fraser used an expanded definition of the Lowcountry that included all of the South Carolina and Georgia coastal counties as well as areas with North Carolina and Florida. Fraser’s definition was developed for the purpose of analyzing a geographically uniform area vis-à-vis its exposure to hurricanes.

One of the defining characteristics of the Lowcountry is its mix of lowlands, marshlands, and open tidal waters. With a tidal range of up to ten feet, it is often difficult to discern where one ends and the other begins.

Coastal marshes are a transitional area where the rivers meet the sea. They are comprised of intertidal estuaries and rivers in which salinity can range from near ocean strength (30 parts per thousand) to brackish water (greater than .5 and less than 30 parts per thousand). Coastal marshes are among the earth’s most productive ecosystems, providing nurseries for many species of birds and fish, as well as vital wildlife habitat. Marshes are vital for commercial fisheries, notably the shrimping industry.20

Colonization of coastal areas by Europeans led to diking, draining, and filling of marshlands. According to the Clemson University Cooperative Extension, by the mid-1950s, nearly 50 percent of the nation’s wetlands were destroyed. Marshlands are now protected by an array of federal, state, and local laws, but they remain threatened by stormwater runoff and ongoing construction. Coastal communities continue to attract new residents, leading to new, hardening infrastructure (e.g., roads, rooftops, and parking lots).21

The increase in impervious surfaces adversely impacts natural hydrology and results in greater volumes of stormwater runoff entering waterways. Population growth also produces more contributors to nonpoint source pollution (e.g., bacteria and pathogens from pet waste, sediment from construction activities, excess nutrients from improper fertilizer application, and gasoline and oil from vehicles). Another adverse consequence of development is a loss of natural flood control provided by marshes, which absorb the shock of tropical storms and minimize flooding and erosion.

New regulatory regimes are greatly reducing the impacts of development, but not completely eliminating them. The cost of flood insurance and homeowners’ insurance in general has increased dramatically in recent years as natural flood mitigation diminishes. This has led to a new set of problems related to gentrification and elitification. Traditional “working class” residents, who constitute the labor force serving upscale developments, are being displaced as they can no longer afford the high cost of real estate worsened by attendant high property taxes and insurance costs.

There is a rich variety of plant species in the Lowcountry. The South Carolina Wildlife Foundation lists twenty-two evergreen and deciduous trees that grow to heights of fifty feet or more. Another twenty-seven species mature to heights between fifteen and forty feet. There are twelve species of large evergreen and deciduous shrubs number at twelve, and thirteen smaller shrubs. Additionally, there are dozens of ground layer plants, ferns, and grasses indigenous to the Lowcountry.22

The three species of trees that perhaps contribute most to the visual character of the Lowcountry are the Cabbage Palmetto (Sabal palmetto), the State Tree prominent on the State Flag; the Live Oak (Quercus virginiana), and the Longleaf Pine (Pinus).

The coastal regime of vegetation of the Lowcountry is part of the larger Southern Atlantic Coastal Plain Maritime Forest, a system that encompasses varied woody vegetation present on barrier islands, back barrier islands, and near-coastal strands, extending from South Carolina (near the Cooper River), through Georgia, and southward to Volusia County, Florida. The primary range of the system coincides with the Sea Islands, a chain of more than 100 islands with elevations typically less than twelve feet above mean sea level.

Spanish moss is a bromeliad commonly is found on the southern live oak. It is an epiphyte that absorbs nutrients and water through its own leaves from the air and rain falling upon it. Spanish moss is a character element Deep South Gothic imagery and culture and associated with subtropical humid climates of the region.

The wildlife that lend elements of character to the Lowcountry include the American Alligator; forty or so species of resident landbirds (including the Carolina chickadee, Carolina wren, Northern cardinal, Eastern towhee and red-bellied woodpecker); migratory landbirds (about 75 of which use the South Carolina coastal zone as a migration corridor; birds of prey (eagles, osprey, hawks, falcons, kites, owls, and vultures); wading birds (snowy egret, great egret, great blue heron, tricolored heron, green heron, black-crowned night heron, yellow-crowned night heron, white ibis, glossy ibis and wood stork); amphibians; at least 38 reptilian species (including skinks, lizards, snakes, turtles, and of course the American Alligator); mammals (white-tailed deer, bobcats, raccoons, Virginia opossums, Eastern grey squirrels, Eastern fox squirrels, Southern flying squirrels, marsh rabbits, Eastern cottontails, Northern river otters, minks, bats and a number of small rodents and insectivores). The bald eagle, one of the more visible elements of Lowcountry character like the alligator, is the largest bird of prey commonly found in eastern North America, and they are near-permanent residents in the coastal zone, departing briefly in early summer.23

The climate of the two cities is virtually identical, with only slight variation in temperature and rainfall patterns attributable in part to Savannah’s slightly more inland location. While average temperatures and monthly rainfall amounts appear to follow a predictable arc, weather can fluctuate greatly compared to Mediterranean and temperate climates, especially those on the West Coast. The jet streams can deliver alternating tropical and continental fronts while the Atlantic hurricane season can deliver severe weather from the Atlantic in the months of July to November. Nevertheless, spring and fall are generally pleasant times to be in the vicinity of the Lowcountry, and they are the seasons that attract most visitors.

Vulnerability

Hurricanes, fires, and disease are interwoven into the history of the Lowcountry. While the latter two threats are greatly diminished by modern building and health codes, hurricanes remain as an unstoppable force. The most destructive hurricane in recent memory was Hugo. The eye of the Category 4 hurricane made landfall in South Carolina at Sullivan’s Island on September 22 maximum sustained wind speeds estimated at 140 miles per hour. Hugo had an 8-foot storm surge in Charleston, nearly 13 feet above mean lower low tide. Hugo brought storm surges as high as 20 feet elsewhere in the Lowcountry. The South Carolina Electric and Gas Company estimated that the hurricane caused $5.9 billion in property damage.24

The primary volume of Charleston and Savannah contains a discussion of the geographic vulnerability of the two cities to hurricanes, and also the modest sheltering they receive from their location within the Georgia Bight. By comparison, the Outer Banks of North Carolina are more exposed and more frequently struck by hurricanes. Of the two cities, Charleston is the slightly more vulnerable based on a review of the historical data of the National Hurricane Center and the historian Walter Fraser’s work, Lowcountry Hurricanes: Three Centuries of Storms at Sea and Ashore.25

Fraser noted the historical effects of hurricanes, writing, “Many historians have overlooked the effects of the weather, especially hurricanes and tropical storms, on agriculture, class formation, economic development, and migration patterns in the Lowcountry.” Only large planters could financially withstand the devastation of such storms and quickly rebuild after they strike.26

Today, of course, federally subsidized flood insurance and private insurance covering other forms of storm damage level the playing field. One must note, however, that once again the playing field is becoming inequitable as insurance rates have skyrocketed since the massively devastating effects of hurricanes Hugo (1989), Andrew (1992), and Katrina (2005), among others in recent times. Gentrification and elitification are accelerating, a trend exacerbated by high insurance costs. A more detailed list of storm events can be found at the end of the chapter.

Urban/Rural Divide

The political advisor and commentator James Carville once described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between. That divide is found throughout the United States. Urbanized areas almost universally lean Democratic while rural areas almost always lean Republican, with the suburbs various shades in between.27

The urban/rural divide exists in the Lowcountry to the same degree as most other places. Charleston and Savannah are Democratic-leaning cities surrounded by rural, Republic-leaning counties (often strongly so). Smaller cities in the Lowcountry also lean Democratic or are somewhat evenly split.28

The divide appears to be increasing as rural southerners in particular increasingly embrace the rightward shift of the Republican Party and the rise of Trumpism. The trend may signal less cooperation between cities and urbanized counties on the one hand and rural jurisdictions on the other. Many areas of governance could ultimately be affected, one of the more obvious areas being conservation and environment protection.

Gentrification and elitification, both of which are addressed in the principal volume, are likely to drive middle income residents out to the suburbs and smaller towns. The long-term effects on politics, governance, and policies are difficult to predict.

The Natural Environment and Community Character

The Lowcountry is the heart of a relatively small and unique environment in the United States, one of dense maritime forests, vast marshlands, tidal rivers and estuaries. The estuarine and forest ecosystems are essential to both domestic and migratory species. It is an ecosystem that speaks to the people who have settled there, the Gullah people of the Sea Islands, the descendants of colonists, and the newcomers, many of whom commit themselves to local conservation initiatives. Although the environment is threatened by development, mitigation initiatives are widely supported.

It was not always that way. In the 1980s there was a sense throughout much of the Lowcountry that times were leaving it behind. Many called for industrialization, taking advantage of existing deep water port facilities in Charleston, Port Royal, and Georgetown. The Savannah River was already a six-mile industrial corridor on the Georgia side, and advocates saw potential to do the same on the South Carolina side of the river. When the German-owned BASF Corporation initiated plans to build a $100 million petrochemical complex in Beaufort County, local support from many quarters was strong. Conservation groups fought the initiative and eventually prevailed.29

Ultimately, a consensus emerged that the Lowcountry’s natural environment possessed greater economic potential than widespread industrialization. While industry is still sought by the area’s counties, industrial zoning is confined to far smaller areas than those that are zoned for preservation or less environmentally impactful forms of development.30

While growth remains strong throughout the Lowcountry, the features of the natural environment that reinforce its sultry southern, semitropical, rustic (or “ruralesque”) image are largely protected. Elements of the natural environment that contribute to Lowcountry character are:

• Climate: The climate of a given location is influenced by its geographic situation in relation to continental mass, bodies of water and ocean currents, jet streams, prevailing winds, and its latitude. These varied influences combine to create the “sultriness” many people associate with the Lowcountry. The Gulf Stream offshore brings the warming effects of a tropical current. Air masses from the Gulf of Mexico bring warm, humid air and tropical storms. Latitude places it in a belt without dominant prevailing winds to provide relief on hot days. The location in relation to winter continental air masses leaves it vulnerable to hard winter freezes, while the location in relation to hurricane tracks leaves it vulnerable to devastating storm surge and destructive winds.
• Weather: Whereas climate is the sum of the established patterns of temperature, rainfall, humidity, and winds, weather is the occurrence of any of those conditions in the present or at a given time of concern. The weather in the Lowcountry, as suggested in the discussion of climate, is less predictable than in many locations and has a greater likelihood of extreme events. This aspect of the area creates a greater sense of danger and vulnerability to the forces of nature. One has perhaps a greater awareness of living within natures embrace.
• Topography: Most of the Lowcountry exists within a ten-foot tidal range as its waters and marshes account for most of the area of its defining coastal counties. The bordering uplands not inundated at times by tidal waters include vast areas with elevations less than twelve feet, the height of potential storm surge in most areas. Yet there are high bluffs of up to fifty feet that give greater definition to the places where land borders estuarine rivers, coveted places with exceptional vistas. With no one far from water’s edge, everyone is acutely aware that they are part of an estuarine expanse.
• Hydrology: Most Lowcountry residents, human or other, live on an island, a peninsula, or along a tidal or estuarine waterway. Flooding is seldom a problem with many avenues for stormwater to leave the land. The exception, of course, is storm surge associated with hurricanes especially when driven by incoming tides. The persistent movement of tidal waters is part of the feel and character of place and is reflected in the titles of many books (for example, Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides, Christina Rae Butler’s Lowcountry at High Tide, or James Tuten’s Lowcountry Time and Tide). The tides are part of the consciousness of life in the Lowcountry.
• Vegetation: With all the imagery of tides and low topography what does vegetation have to do with it? A lot! The mix of palmettos, live oaks, and pines is sui generis. It creates a dense forest where every inch seems filled with branches, all of a very different sort. Spanish moss, an epiphytic plant that grows on large trees in tropical and subtropical climates, adds more visual interest to the complex mix. Spartina is a tall, prolific grass that grows in salt marsh; its visual effect to contrast with surrounding waters while adding to expansive views associated with the Lowcountry.
• Wildlife: Of the various guilds (species that tend to congregate) described above, reptiles, raptors, and wading birds may be those most closely associated with the Lowcountry. Many species are large and visible during the day, reminders to humans that a thriving natural environment engulfs them.

Together, these elements for a composite character that is unique and readily recognizable. The character of the Lowcountry often provides the backdrop for films. The last two tables in this chapter list movies filmed in Charleston, Savannah, or elsewhere in the Lowcountry, noting the character elements in each. In his Epistle IV, to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, Alexander Pope established a new, modern usage of the Roman term genius loci, or the spirit of a place underlying its distinctive character.

Consult the genius of the place in all;

That tells the waters to rise, or fall;

Or helps th’ ambitious hill the heav’ns to scale,

Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;

Calls in the country, catches opening glades,

Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,

Now breaks, or now directs, th’ intending lines;

Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.

If one is to presume to describe the genius loci of the Lowcountry in a single paragraph, in might be done thusly: It is a place of expansive natural beauty with silent threats perpetually waiting to be heard. It courts a human presence with its vistas of teeming waters and marshes bordered by lush woodlands; it inspires with balmy air, innervates with sultry air, terrifies with stormy air; it is a tropical paradise, nature alive all around, then threatened by a radical jolt of cold from the northwest, a deluge from the southwest, or worse from the southeast; then it is quite once again, wading birds foraging shallow waters, gators sunning on water’s edge, fins knifing through still waters, raptors circling above. The time always returns for its human occupants to meditate upon the busy stillness, write down thoughts it inspires, watch the sun set over it all with a drink to drink it in.

3. Demographic and Economic Data

This chapter contains tables and data analysis that augments that presented in the principal volume. Full bibliographic information can be found in the bibliography of that volume.

At the time of the first United States census in 1790, Charleston ranked as the fourth largest city in the new nations, and it was one of the wealthiest. Although Savannah did not rank among the largest cities, it was one of the nation’s mid-sized cities by the standards of the time. The two cities retained a high ranking until the Louisiana Purchase opened up new territory for westward growth. They were soon surpassed in population by New Orleans and St. Louis. The expansion of cotton cultivation across the South, with a concentration of growers in the Lower Mississippi Valley doomed Charleston and Savannah to second tier status. The advent of railroads and new major transportation hubs such as Atlanta also eclipsed the two cities.

Charleston was harder hit by erosion of its economic base. Savannah eventually managed to catch up in population with Charleston, if only for a brief period. The two cities have remained roughly at parity since then, although the Charleston metropolitan area has grown more rapidly over the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. Neither city ranked in the top 200 in the 2020 census.

The thesis of Charleston and Savannah is that both cities have gone through cyclical change, first rising on the profits of African slave labor used primarily for cultivating rice, a crop with which those from the “Rice Coast” were familiar. It was a crop grown in coastal regions of Africa for centuries. When rice became less profitable and new states to the west became more economically powerful, Charleston and Savannah entered a long period of decline.

Both cities declined further as the resurrection of White supremacist legal and social codes rose across the South after Reconstruction. With approximately half of the population of the two cities disenfranchised and economically marginalized, economic growth was severely handicapped and prosperity elusive. Charleston, in particular, relied on federal money spent on the Naval Shipyard to maintain a standard of living above abject poverty.

The reinvention of the two cities did not begin until they confronted the Civil Rights movement beginning the 1950s and legislatively gaining traction in the 1960s. Gradually, they embraced reforms and reduced or removed old barriers to Black participation in formal social institutions and the broader economy. This Second Reconstruction began a period of economic resurgence that continues to this day.

Old institutions die hard, and vestiges of Jim Crow remained. Equity is sometimes elusive. Reinvention was recharged in 2020 in both cities with conscious efforts to address both institutional racism and informal restraints on social equity.

With reinvention, the tourism industry was able to flourish, creating jobs and opportunities for entrepreneurship. Multicultural attributes of the Lowcountry and the region’s cities became attractions to both tourists and new residents migrating into the area in increasing numbers, injecting their incomes and savings into the economy.

The challenge of prosperity is, once again, one of inclusion and equity. As property values increase so does the cost of living. Gentrification and elitification and bringing about displacement of long-time residents from their neighborhoods and adding the cost of commuting to their living costs. Worse than that, the city cores are once again becoming bastions of a wealthy, mostly White elite minority.

Those concerns were primarily the subject of the principal volume and are only summarized here for context, and for readers who may see this companion volume and not the main body of work.

Even with reinvention, both cities declined in size relative to other cities in South Carolina and Georgia. Charleston managed to hold on to its historical outsized political influence in the state, even though it had not been the state capital since 1786, but recently that asset has inevitably begun slipping.

In South Carolina, Columbia, the capital, and the economically powerful Greenville-Spartanburg area have grown faster and claimed their share of political power. In Georgia, Atlanta, of course, has eclipsed all other cities in the state as its economic and political power center. Savannah never retained its political centrality in the way Charleston did, as the table listing the states capital cities suggests.

Urban Structure

City populations can be misleading. They reside within counties and metropolitan areas. Boundaries are often historical artifacts that distort the real nature of a city’s urban area and larger hinterland.

The tables in this section parse through the urban structure of Charleston and Savannah and illustrate the importance of the urban core albeit small in relation to the metropolitan population. Care areas are the historic central business districts and urban neighborhoods. In Charleston and Savannah, they project the character of each to the world. They shape the image of the entire metropolitan area.

For both cities, the core area is four to five square miles, or less than one percent of the metropolitan area. In population, however, they account for approximately five percent of the population in the case of Charleston and ten percent in the case of Savannah.

The core areas also account for the majority of tourism jobs in the metropolitan area and a large proportion of employment in other sectors, such as government.

The major of institutions of each city are situated in its core, including universities, sports facilities, other public facilities for large events, libraries, and cultural institutions such as museums. A potential alienation of the metropolitan area from the core as it gentrifies and becomes known as an exclusive domain for the ultra-wealthy could have adverse consequences. Amenities and waterfront improvements, for instance, might fail to gain countywide support whereas in the past those kinds of improvement were viewed as an asset for the broader community.

As more workers flee the core for less expensive areas, more commuters are put on the road to contribute to congestion. Balanced growth, therefore, is a goal both cities should consider as their core areas force out many residents. More attention should be given to affordable, workforce housing in or near the core, for example. The subsequent section on affordable housing delves more deeply into this challenge.

Historically, the core areas have been large in comparison to outlying areas of the county and metropolitan area, constituting half or more of the population as shown in the table comparing 2020 and 1920 populations. As that ratio changes, the image of the city changes.

Between Charleston and Savannah lies one of the fastest growing counties in the nation, Beaufort County, South Carolina. The area began to take off in the 1980s as Hilton Head Island became a popular resort destination. Growth spread to nearby Bluffton. In the northern section of the county (which is divided by the Broad River), the cities of Beaufort and Port Royal have become notable destinations in their own right, as have the sea islands in that part of the county—Lady’s Island, St. Helena Island, and Fripp Island in particular. Northern Beaufort County is also home to Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot, one of two installations where marines receive basic training, and Beaufort Marine Corps Air Station.

As this new growth area fills in, Charleston and Savannah will likely, sooner or later, become a contiguous metropolitan area. Populations of exurban counties can be seen in the tables below. As of yet, there is little coordination among elected officials or planners in Charleston, Beaufort, and Savannah on the implications of that eventuality.

The two cities differ from other historic cities in having retained, at least to the present, a substantial core resident population. The principal volume investigated this feature, comparing populations and densities in several cities, as shown in the table.

The risk, of course, is that both cities lose this property as they become more exclusive and elitist. Is this a bad thing? Some do not think so, but they are those who benefit financially from elitification.

The final chart in this section compares Charleston and Savannah across several basic indicators. Charleston is Whiter, wealthier, and somewhat older. Both have substantially more non-automobile commuters than in an average city.

The Historical Economy

The following tables provides a detailed profile of the Lowcountry colonial economy. Figures for the South Carolina tables are from Peter A. Coclanis’s The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the Low Country, 1670–1920, and excellent source of demographic and economic statistical data. Figures for the Georgia exports table were obtained from a study of riverboat traffic by Ruby Rahn, a historian of Salzburger history. Rahn was able to document to importance of river traffic to the economy of Savannah and its emerging industrial economy, as shown in the manufacturing of steamboats. Note that the first table is of monetary value and the second is in quantity.

The centrality of rice in the economic rise of Charleston is discussed at length in the principal volume of Charleston and Savannah. In several respects it mimicked the parent monoculture of sugar in Barbados. In turn, the relationship between that monoculture and dependence on the labor of enslaved people.

Most rice exports went to Europe, where they were often transshipped to destinations in Europe. Demand in the Caribbean and South America gradually increased and eventually rose to nearly half of the region’s rice exports.

After the Trustee Period, Savannah and the Georgia coast also became dependent on rice as a primary crop.

The economies of the two cities gradually became more diversified as their hinterlands grew, and as planters experimented with new crops.

Lumber and naval stores for ship building and maintenance also became major exports. They played an important role in Savannah’s Caribbean trade and its ultimate economic rise as an economic power in its own right.

Innovations coming out of the Industrial Revolution such as the cotton gin, steamboats, and railroads expanded each city’s hinterland and led to new waves of prosperity in the nineteenth century. Steamboat traffic on the Savannah River connected the coast with Augusta and led to a heyday of river traffic.

This table provides an unusually detailed glimpse into the Lowcountry colonial economy. Figures were obtained from a study of riverboat traffic by Ruby Rahn, a historian of Salzburger history. Rahn was able to document to importance of river traffic to the economy of Savannah and its emerging industrial economy, as shown in the manufacturing of steamboats.

The second table of exports in the mid-1700s reveals the extent of economic diversification that took hold in the early Royal Colony period. However, rice remained a dominant crop throughout the century.

Rahn’s study dated back before the steamboat era to a period when river traffic was primarily in the form of pole boats, barges, and smaller craft called pettiaguas. The coast was laced with estuarine “rivers” flowing between sea islands and back barrier islands. Initial commerce was limited to these arteries, but steamboats led to greater inland reach.

Steamboats began operating on the rivers in the early 1800s, and continued operating through the century. On the eve of the Civil War, a comprehensive network of steamboats and railroads enhanced connectivity throughout the region.

Contemporary Economic Profile

Economic activity such as employment and wages is recorded by government agencies using the North American Industry Classification System, or NAICS (“nakes”). State-level departments of labor collect NAICS data, which is compiled nationally by the U.S. Department of Labor. The Census Bureau also collects data on economic activity using NAICS. The major difference between the labor and census reporting systems is that the former data is collected from employers while census economic data is collected from workers. It is therefore useful to look at both sources of information, as each gives a different picture of the economy.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), a quarterly count of employment and wages reported by employers. Reports cover four levels of geography: county, Metropolitan Statistical Areas (multi-county metropolitan areas), state, and national.

The Charleston Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) population enumerated by the 2010 census was 787,643, approximately double that of Savannah’s MSA population of 389,494. Employment figures by NAICS sector shown below reveals that the Charleston MSA labor force is not quite double that of the Savannah MSA.

The first chart in the data tables section compares the top five industries for the two SMAs. The largest sector for both metropolitan areas is Trade, transportation, and utilities, followed by Leisure and hospitality. In the former sector, Savannah exceeds the national average by six points, and in the latter sector, both metropolitan areas exceed the national average by five points. In other sectors, both areas differ from the national average by two points or less. Savannah is lower than the national average by four points in professional and business services and by three points in the financial sector, otherwise, both areas differ from national averages by two points or less.

Charleston’s lower percentage in manufacturing (10% versus 12%) is surprising given the city’s recent success attracting Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Daimler Vans Manufacturing assembly plants (both in North Charleston). Savannah was close to a deal with Daimler in the early 2000s, which was to be located on a “megasite” near the airport, when the German manufacturer abruptly withdrew and soon afterward announced a deal to build the plant in North Charleston.

While there are differences to be found in the details, but overall the two cities are remarkably similar in economic profile. Except as noted above, both are not substantially different from national averages, supporting the thesis that Charleston and Savannah are real, functioning cities, not contrived tourist destinations. The unemployment rate for May, 2019 reported by the BLS was 2.9 percent for Charleston and 3.2 percent for Savannah.

Industrial development in Charleston has gradually moved from the Peninsula along the Cooper River toward the City of North Charleston (incorporated in 1972). The Charleston Airport and newer SCPA port terminals are also located in North Charleston. Additional industry within the MSA is located farther up the Cooper River in the City of Hanahan (also incorporated in 1972), some of which is military related.31

The five largest employers located within the City of Charleston in 2016 were the Medical University of South Carolina with 12,200 employees, followed by Roper St. Francis Healthcare with 5,100; College of Charleston with 2,200; City of Charleston with 1,800; and, Blackbaud, Inc. (a computer software company) with 1,300 employees.32

Industrial development in Savannah is concentrated along the Savannah River from Elba Island to Port Wentworth, as well as in a network of highways with access to the terminals along the river and the Savannah–Hilton Head International Airport. Elba Island, five miles downriver from downtown Savannah, is the terminus of a liquified natural gas (LNG) pipeline operated by Houston-based energy company Kinder Morgan, which was approved in 2016 to begin a $2.3 billion expansion for global export of LNG associated with the methane gas fracking boom.33

Industrialization extends upstream from downtown Savannah another six miles to the Town of Port Wentworth. Major industries in the corridor include the Georgia Ports Authority Garden City Container Terminal, International Paper (once the largest paper mill in the world), and the Dixie Crystal Sugar Refinery (one of two refineries in the United States owned by Imperial Sugar Company of Sugar Land, Texas).34

A growing area of intermodal facilities and distribution warehouses extends from the river westward through Chatham County and into neighboring Effingham County to Interstate 16, providing access to Atlanta. The industrial area is bisected by Interstate 95, which is also becoming a major commercial corridor.

Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, a subsidiary of General Dynamics, is headquartered at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport. Employing 12,000 people it is by far the region’s largest private-sector employer. By comparison, Savannah’s two leading medical centers have a combined labor force of 8,000, and the Georgia Ports Authority employs 1,250 people.35

4. Infrastructure

Seaports

Regional seaports that compete directly with Charleston and Savannah are Jacksonville and Wilmington. Norfolk and Miami are also strong competitors, although they serve a somewhat different hinterland. Houston and New Orleans, less direct competitors, are approximately the same distance from the Panama Canal (1,500 miles), the portal for Asian trade, but farther from European trade partners. Miami is closest to the Canal, but is the most distant from northern markets. Jacksonville competes for both Canal and European trade, but is over 100 miles further than Savannah from Atlanta, the region’s largest manufacturing and distribution hub. Charleston and Savannah, with the benefit of heavy investment in port infrastructure, are well-positioned to connect maritime trade with inland industry, particularly those industries linked to the Interstate 95 corridor and within the Interstate 85 corridor between Charlotte and Atlanta.

The ports of Charleston and Savannah rank eighth and fourth, respectively, among container ports in the United States. Both rank among the elite top 100 ports in the world, according to Lloyd’s List, a maritime intelligence report. In 2017, Charleston ranked 81st, beyond Osaka in 80th place, while Savannah ranked 38th, with Tokyo following it at 39th place.

Rankings of container ports are based on the throughput of twenty-foot container equivalents, or TEU. The standard containers one sees on trucks throughout the world come in twenty- and forty-foot lengths, the latter counting as two TEU. Major logistics improvements at both ports will ensure that they remain globally competitive as container ports. The term “logistics” refers to the transportation, storage, and distribution of cargo.36

The Port of Charleston is the principal port operated by the South Carolina Ports Authority (SCPA). In the Charleston area, SCPA operates six terminals on the Cooper and Wando rivers as well as a cruise ship port adjacent to the historic district. Charleston’s port facilities are linked to Upstate industries by railroad and Interstate 25, which intersects with Interstate 85 at the Greenville-Spartanburg industrial corridor. The Greer Inland Port adjacent Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP) is the principal cargo terminus for the region.

The Port of Charleston reports that it is the fastest-growing major port in the United States. Container volume for the period 2011 through 2017 increased 58 percent to a volume of 2.2 million TEU. Twenty-five container ships to and from 73 foreign ports visit Charleston on a weekly basis. The port’s intermodal rail volume has increased in recent years, and now totals 22 percent of overall volume. SCPA is currently building the only new container terminal in the U.S., which, at full build-out, will boost capacity in the port by 50 percent.37

In addition to container traffic, the port conducts heavy-lift, traditional breakbulk, and roll-on/roll-off (“ro-ro”) operations. One of the major cargos through Charleston is automotive vehicles; 234,253 import and export vehicles passed through the port in 2017. More than $10 billion has been invested by automotive industries using the port over the last 4 years. They include a Michelin distribution center in Spartanburg County; a Volvo car manufacturing plant being built near the port; and an expansion of the existing Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Van plant, also near the port.38

A critical metric for the viability and competitiveness of a seaport is channel depth. Charleston currently has the deepest water in its competitive region with a maintained harbor depth of 45 feet at mean low tide throughout the main shipping channel, and 47 feet in the entrance channel. Harbor deepening currently underway will add seven feet of depth and will make Charleston the deepest harbor on the East Coast.

Ocean-going cargo vessels have increased in size and have deeper drafts than can be accommodated by most seaports today. Panama Canal ship size specifications have increased following reconfiguration of two of its older locks in 2016. To accommodate larger vessels now coming through the canal, East Coast seaports have instituted channel dredging and other improvements consistent with the New Panamax Canal standards.

The Port of Charleston currently handles 14,000 TEU ships on a regular basis. With an additional seven feet of depth in 2020, Charleston will be able to accommodate New Panamax and larger post-Panamax ships on all tides at any time of day and serve up to twenty post-Panamax vessel calls per week. SCPA has successfully simulated a 19,000 TEU ship reaching the Wando Welch Terminal.39

Bridge heights are another potential limitation on shipping. The Ravenel Bridge over the Cooper River has a clearance of 186 feet. While the center span of the bridge’s lowest points measures 186 feet air height clearance, the highest point at the center of the bridge measures 206 feet. A 19,000 TEU ship will be able to move safely under the bridge. The air gap clearance is measured with a sensor on the bridge and posted in real time on NOAA’s website.40

The South Carolina Ports Authority in total is responsible for one out of 11 jobs statewide, and port-supported jobs pay nearly 40 percent higher wages than the state average. It generates $53 billion in annual economic activity and sustains 187,600 jobs. Approximately half of the economic impact is in the Upstate region where the automotive cluster is a vital part of economic growth in the state.41

Officials at SCPA characterize their relationship with the Port of Savannah as competitive, with each serving the same general hinterland. Charleston is more favorably positioned to serve routes to the north and west in markets such as North Carolina and Tennessee. Savannah has an advantage in more southern markets such as Florida. Savannah also enjoys somewhat faster access to Atlanta, the Southeast’s largest market; however, Charleston’s access to Atlanta is very competitive and the cost/time differential is small.42

Charleston is the most efficient top U.S. container port, and Savannah is a close second. Charleston has an advantage over Savannah with its shorter vessel transit from the open sea, with two-way access for large ships, and with significantly deeper water for wider sailing windows. Economic development priorities and successes over the decades have led to specialization. Charleston is well-known for serving advanced manufacturing, while Savannah is well-known for its excellence in serving retail consumer goods importers.43

The Port of Savannah is the principal port of the Georgia Ports Authority. It is home to the largest single-terminal container facility of its kind in North America. The Garden City Terminal is the fourth busiest container handling facility in the United States. Ocean Terminal, Savannah’s dedicated breakbulk and “ro-ro” facility, covers 200 acres and provides more than 1.4 million square feet of covered storage. Savannah’s total container trade reached a record 4.046 million TEU in 2017. The port handles 35 container ships and 38 trains per week. With an average of 14 massive ships per day passing downtown Savannah on the river, residents and visitors are able to see up close the impact of global trade and appreciate the historical importance of trade for the city.44

The Savannah Harbor Expansion Project, like the improvements underway in Charleston, will enable the port to remain competitive in the New Panamax trade environment. The project, expected to be completed in late 2021, will deepen the Savannah River to 47 feet at low tide, thereby increasing the maximum draft of vessels from 39.5 feet to as much as 50 feet when coming in with the tide.45

In January, 2022 GPA expanded annual capacity at the Garden City Terminal to 670,000 TEUs. Another 155,000 TEUs of terminal capacity will come on line soon after that, and in June another 850,000 TEUs will be phased in. The South Atlantic Supply Chain Relief Program, which facilitating new off-terminal “pop-up” container yards in the region will produce an additional half-million TEUs.46

As is the case with Charleston, a single bridge spans the channel posing a limit to the size of ships reaching the main Garden City Terminal. The Talmadge Bridge, constructed in 1991, spans the Savannah River. The south approach is located between the city’s historic core and the terminal. Its clearance of 185 feet is virtually identical to that of Charleston’s Ravenel Bridge for most of the center span, but 21 feet less at the center point.47

The GPA has also established the Appalachian Regional Port in Murray County. This rail facility in Northwest Georgia lowers the cost of moving cargo to and from the Port of Savannah, while taking 50,000 trucks per year off regional highways.48

Savannah is situated closer to Atlanta than competitors Charleston or Jacksonville (see the discussion of Interstate highways below), making it a strong partner for the region’s largest city. GPA and its various ancillary linkages account for more than 369,000 jobs statewide and they produce over $84 billion dollars in annual revenue.49

A rare cooperative venture involving both ports authorities is planned for Jasper County, South Carolina, near downtown Savannah. The current projected timeframe for phase one of the proposed Jasper port is 2035–40. The project has long been viewed as both strategically advantageous and a needed investment in one of the poorest counties in South Carolina.50

Both citys’ seaports pose a challenge for the larger tourism industry and its foundation of historic preservation, cultural tourism, and ecotourism. On the one hand, each city is historically rooted in trade, and the two ports carry that tradition forward. Visually, large container ships traversing the channel are stunning reminders to visitors that both cities have vibrant economies apart from tourism. On the other hand, compatibility questions have arisen over channel dredging, industrial blight, and heavy traffic. The last is probably the greatest challenge currently facing both cities at the current time. Savannah’s situation is particularly acute as port-related traffic moves from east to west through the city’s historic districts. While dredging and blight have generally been carefully managed, truck traffic increasingly affects the quality of life in and near the historic core of both cities. The problem has been studied in-depth, but the high cost of effective mitigation strategies has thus far rendered all proposed solutions unworkable.

Railroads

Seaports and railroads are essential partners in trade. Even as interstate highway commerce and air cargo operations gain market share of medium and long-distance hauling, railroads (and alternative modes such as pipelines) remain vitally important. Capacity constraints on highways and at airports will ensure that rail freight service continues to be an essential element of national transportation infrastructure.

Until the twentieth century, neither Charleston nor Savannah had highway infrastructure to support intercity commerce, but they were pioneers in the development of railroads (as described in chapters 3 and 4). Railroads provided the essential linkages between seaports and inland manufacturing and distribution cities as the industrializing nation grew.

Charleston and Savannah are served by two Class I railroads, which are defined as having annual carrier operating revenues of $250 million or more in 1991 dollars. Norfolk Southern Railway operates an intermodal facility in North Charleston and both a general freight facility, the Dillard Yard, and an intermodal facility, Mason Yard, in Savannah. Mason Yard offers a direct connection to Savannah Port Terminal Railroad.

CSX Transportation, the other Class I railroad, operates flat yards in both cities, the Bennett Yard in Charleston and the Southover Yard in Savannah. The railroad operates intermodal facilities in both cities. Both Norfolk Southern and CSX were formed out of other railroads in an industry where acquisitions and mergers were historically commonplace.

Georgia Central Railway operates a 175-mile line from Macon to Savannah that was part of the former Seaboard Coast Line system. The line connects with CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway at Savannah.

Passenger rail service to both cities is provided by Amtrak. Passenger terminals are located in North Charleston and Savannah. Service is part of the East Coast Silver Palmetto Service, which originates in New York and terminates alternately in Tampa and Miami.

Airports

Major commercial airports are classified as “primary airports” if they have more than 10,000 passenger boardings per year; within that broad category they are ranked as large, medium, and small hubs, and nonprimary hub airports, based on their share of total U.S. passenger boardings. Both Charleston and Savannah airports are small hubs. Charleston had 2,192,893 enplanements in 2018, ranking 63rd among the nation’s airports. Savannah had 1,356,660 enplanements in 2018, ranking 83rd in the nation. The 2018 figures represented increases of 12.7 percent over the previous year for Charleston and 13.7 percent for Savannah.51

The Charleston International Airport (CHS) is an Air Force Joint-Use Military Airfield operated by the Charleston County Aviation Authority. It is one of ten such Air Force bases. The term “joint-use airport” means an airport owned by the Department of Defense, at which both military and civilian aircraft make shared use of the airfield. The airport is home to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner assembly plant. Air cargo services are provided by Atlas Air, FedEx Express, FedEx Feeder, and UPS Airlines. Charleston ranked 75th among U.S. cities in 2018 in air cargo.52

Charleston’s airline terminal completed a four-year redevelopment and expansion project, adding five new gates, in 2016. The following year a memorial for the Emanuel Nine, the victims of the Mother Emmanuel AME Church shooting, was placed in the terminal.

Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport (SAV) is owned by the City of Savannah and managed by the Savannah Airport Commission. World headquarters for Gulfstream Aerospace is located on the opposite side of the airport from the passenger terminal. The Georgia Air National Guard’s 165th Airlift Wing is also based at the airport. FedEx Express and UPS Airlines provide cargo service to the airport.

The Hilton Head area, approximately 40 miles from Savannah in Beaufort County, South Carolina, generates nearly half of the passenger traffic at SAV. Hilton Head is a center of resort development featuring golf and oceanfront activities. Increasingly, Beaufort County is featuring historical tourism and ecological tourism as it markets itself as a destination, taking advantage of its location between Charleston and Savannah.

Neither airport has year-round, scheduled international flights, although both have U.S. Customs facilities and are part of a Foreign Trade Zone. As of this writing, amid the coronavirus pandemic, British Airways affirmed plans to launch two nonstop flights each week between Charleston and London during the spring and fall tourism seasons.

Highways

Charleston and Savannah both have well-developed networks of Interstate highways, limited-access state highways, and freeways. Interstate 26 is Charleston’s primary link to Interstate 95, from which it has access to all major East Coast cities from Boston to Miami. Within the State of South Carolina, Interstate 26 intersects with Interstate 95 at mile 52, with Interstates 20 and 77 at the state capital of Columbia, near mile 120, and with Interstates 385 and 85 in the Greenville-Spartanburg area, ninety miles north of Columbia. The last two have become the most important of Charleston’s trade zones in recent decades with BMW, Michelin, and other manufacturers investing heavily in the Greenville-Spartanburg corridor.

Charleston is 320 miles from Atlanta by Interstate highway, closer than Jacksonville by 125 miles, but farther than Savannah by about 75 miles. Charleston is 212 miles via Interstate from Charlotte, North Carolina, a major financial center and airline hub. Heavy traffic on Interstate 26 as a direct result of the successful linking of the Port of Charleston and the Inland Port at Greer, has necessitated the widening of the highway south of Columbia and will require additional mitigations in the coming years.

Interstate 26 terminates in Charleston just north of the Medical University of South Carolina amid historic neighborhoods, where it connects to US-17, a major north-south highway spanning much of the East Coast. The segment of US-17 through the City of Charleston is narrow and congested but is improved to four-lane divided highway standards in many segments outside the metropolitan area. Drive time via US-17 south to Savannah is approximately two hours, and north to Wilmington, North Carolina is nearly three-and-a-half hours.

Interstate 26 branches south and north into Interstate 526 (essentially an urban ring-freeway as well as a bypass route) near Charleston International Airport, with the north branch connecting to US-17 in Mt. Pleasant, and with the south branch connecting to US-17 in West Ashley. The bifurcation allows through traffic to avoid the congested historic core of Charleston, where US-17 often approaches gridlock.

Savannah is 245 miles from Atlanta by Interstate 16 and Interstate 75. Interstate 16, which begins in downtown Savannah, intersects with Interstate 95 ten miles to the west, two interchanges south of the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport and near most of the newer commercial and industrial development in the metropolitan area.

Interstate 16 flows seamlessly into a limited-access segment of US-17 northbound immediately west of the historic district. It connects to US-17 southbound farther west via a segment of Interstate 516, which continues southward as Veteran’s Parkway, an urban freeway that connects downtown Savannah with suburban neighborhoods to the southwest. East of downtown, the Harry S. Truman Parkway is an urban freeway connecting downtown Savannah with the city’s older mid-city suburbs as well as to its newer southside neighborhoods.

The Port of Savannah’s Garden City terminal has limited-access connectivity with Interstates 95 and Interstate 16 via the Jimmy DeLoach Parkway, which is lined with warehousing, distribution, trucking, and other logistical facilities.

As in Charleston, east-west connectivity is problematic in Savannah because of the constraints presented by historic districts and established neighborhoods. Various scenarios for tunnels, flyovers, and bridges have been studied, and all have been found to be too expensive to implement immediately. The state’s recovery following the Great Recession of 2007–2009, which produced a road-funding shortfall, may ultimately produce sufficient revenue to fund major improvements in Savannah.

Although very little Interstate construction occurred in the historic core of Savannah, the last off-ramp of Interstate 16 is designated for removal by the City’s comprehensive plan. Removal of the off-ramp will reconnect the historically Black neighborhood west of Montgomery Street.

In general, the road system in Savannah is more efficient than that of Charleston, a benefit dating to James Oglethorpe’s original plan for the city in which ample rights-of-way were laid out over a nearly seventy-square-mile area. Those rights-of-way were preserved to a sufficient degree over nearly three centuries to support today’s urban roadway needs, whereas Charleston focused on river-oriented development, to the detriment of future needs for interior rights-of-way.

5. Historical Resources

Historical and Cultural Resources in the Charleston Area

Befitting its emphasis on historical and cultural tourism, most of Charleston’s visitor attractions are associated with its history. Museum Mile is a 1.1-mile-long corridor stretching along Meeting Street from the Visitor Center to the Nathaniel Russell House with a concentration of historical venues, cultural attractions, and garden tours. Many of the city’s historic houses with public tours are in the corridor or within walki ng distance of it. The Old Slave Mart Museum tells the story of the slave trade through the medium of the building and site where the sale of enslaved persons occurred. The Gibbes Museum of Art has a collection of over 10,000 American works, many of which reflect the city’s and the Lowcountry’s unique landscape and cultural heritage. The Charleston Museum maintains a wide-ranging collection of material on Lowcountry culture, decorative arts, military history, and natural history. The Karpeles Manuscript Museum houses the world’s largest private collection of historically significant manuscripts.

Several historic plantations in and near Charleston offer various experiences, including house tours, invoking Lowcountry history. Lowndes Grove Plantation is the only surviving plantation house located on the peninsula. Other plantation museums and gardens near the city include, McLeod Plantation on James Island; Boone Hall Plantation located in Mt. Pleasant; and Drayton Hall, Magnolia Plantation, and Middleton Place on the upper Ashley River. Plantations are discussed further in the subsequent section on historic preservation.

Several museums document military history. Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum across the Cooper River in Mt. Pleasant is home of the USS Yorktown and other military vessels and aircraft. The Friends of the Hunley offers tours of the Confederate submarine, the H. L. Hunley, sunk in 1864 and now restored. The Citadel Museum documents the history of the school. The Confederate Museum in Market Hall contains Civil War memorabilia. The Medal of Honor Museum tells the story of recipients and documents Medal of Honor history. Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island, two of the most visited area attractions, are discussed further in the subsequent section on historic preservation.

Other area historic and cultural attractions include the North Charleston Fire Museum and Educational Center and the Postal Museum in the Post Office Building constructed in the 1890s, located at Meeting and Broad streets.

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor is a 12,000 square mile area extending from the coastal area surrounding Wilmington, North Carolina to northeast Florida; it includes seventy-nine barrier and back-barrier islands, the backbone of Gullah/Geechee culture. It is a National Heritage Area designated by Congress for the unique culture of the Gullah Geechee people living in the region for centuries. The corridor preserves and promotes knowledge of the Gullah Geechee heritage of cultural traditions in art, music, folklore, textiles, basket-weaving, and food ways. The name “Gullah,” possibly derived from the Gola people of West Africa, is more commonly used in the Lowcountry, whereas “Geechee,” derived from the Ogeechee River south of Savannah, is more common in coastal Georgia.53

The Corridor encompasses multiple sites identified as historically and culturally significant to the Gullah Geechee people. Those in the Lowcountry include: Angel Oak on Johns Island; Avery Research Center in Charleston; Caw Caw Interpretive Center in Ravenel; Phillip Simmons House and Museum in Charleston; McLeod Plantation on James Island, described as “the only South Carolina plantation to tell the story of slavery from the perspective of the enslaved”; Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston; Drayton Hall in Charleston; Boone Hall Plantation and Gardens in Charleston; Charles Pinckney National Historic Site in Mt Pleasant; The Rice Museum in Georgetown; Penn Center on St. Helena Island in Beaufort County; Mitchelville on Hilton Head Island in Beaufort County; Aiken-Rhett House in Charleston; Gullah Museum of Hilton Head Island; Gullah Museum of Georgetown; and Hobcaw Barony near Georgetown.

A new museum will be opening in late 2021. The International African American Museum will bring to life seldom-told stories and accomplishments of Americans of African descent. It will be located on the Cooper River adjacent to the Charleston Maritime Center, a site where almost half of all African captives arrived in North America.

Charleston was built on a peninsula, and Savannah was built on a ridge surrounded by wetlands, thus having similar constraints to growth. Charleston had the advantage of more river frontage for docks; Savannah had the advantage of being on a ridge that widened south of the river, affording easier reach into interior uplands. The latter advantage enabled Savannah to remain physically unified by contiguous development for nearly 250 years as shown on the map of historic neighborhoods. Charleston, which grew substantially by fill and reclamation, eventually took on more of a “leapfrog” development pattern as growth spread from the peninsula to islands and uplands across the surrounding rivers and estuaries.

The greater difficulty of expanding beyond the peninsula meant that Charleston grew by expanding its edges as well as through inward growth (densification) for a longer time and even more intensively than Savannah. The city’s intensive, fine-grained growth is closely associated with its character, and is as important as architecture in making Charleston the notable destination it has become today. Edge development in the city was accomplished by filling in creeks and wetlands, thereby increasing upland area. A series of maps on the Historic Charleston Foundation website shows the Lower Peninsula nearly doubling in size from first settlement to the present day.54

The early preservation and restoration movement of the 1920s to the 1950s focused on specific buildings along prominent streets south of Broad, such as Tradd and East Bay that fell within the old walled city and initially laid out to Grand Model specifications. Rainbow Row on East Bay, home to many affluent merchants from 1740 to 1860, is a notable example of this initial stage of restoration.

In the 1960s, a preservation movement emerged with the goal of preserving entire neighborhoods. The shift led to the 1974 preservation plan aimed at turning the tide on the flight of people and capital from the urban core to the suburbs. The peninsula had become blighted with derelict properties and a decaying waterfront. The new plan resulted in a building-by-building inventory in the Lower Peninsula, recommendations for new height limits, and a stronger Board of Architectural Review.55

The paradigm shift in political culture in the 1960s and 1970s emphasizing equity and inclusion coupled with the preservationist shift of emphasis to neighborhoods and cultural attributes set the stage for the reinvention of Charleston. The post–World War II decline in population went into reverse in the 1960s and 1970s, as the city gained back the population it lost in the late-1940s and 1950s.

Another paradigm shift occurred during the same period. Post–World War II America was obsessed with urban modernism and suburban semi-ruralism. City centers were envisioned to become renewed with office and residential towers, replacing the old finer-grained, lower-scale development patterns of the past. Interstate highways and urban freeways would link the modern city center to the burgeoning suburbs.

In Charleston, the envisioned conversion was relatively late in coming. Some cities brought in the bulldozers in the 1950s and early 1960s and permanently transformed their historic urban core. In Charleston, the vision materialized in the late 1960s when massive highway and bridge-building projects were proposed by the state’s highway department. The city’s acceptance of the proposals, which would ravage poor neighborhoods, may have been influenced by New York City’s infamous building czar, Robert Moses, who had ties to Charleston and was the commencement speaker at the College of Charleston in 1969.56

Moses gave the speech six months after the Crosstown Expressway opened, linking US-17 with the newly constructed Interstate 26. The Crosstown was later renamed the Septima P. Clark Parkway after the noted African American educator and civil rights activist, a condescending nod to the community that was walled-off from more affluent neighborhoods on the southern half of the Peninsula.

The project ripped apart an established neighborhood, destroying approximately 150 houses in the process. In recent years the city has become “woke” to the social injustice perpetrated against the neighborhood and has formulated plans to stitch the torn city fabric back together.57

For city planning and preservation purposes, the city core is divided into four geographic areas: Lower Peninsula, Mid-Peninsula, Upper Peninsula, and the Neck. Each of these areas encompasses several neighborhoods as well as a mix of commercial, institutional, and industrial districts.

The Lower Peninsula is the area south of Calhoun Street containing the original walled city, the French (Huguenot) Quarter, Harleston Village, the College of Charleston, and the elite South of Broad neighborhood. East Bay, Church, and Meeting streets are major tourism corridors terminating at White Point Garden and The Battery at the tip of the Peninsula. The Meeting Street corridor is the Museum Mile area cited in the discussion of tourism. The upper-central area anchored by the College of Charleston and across Calhoun Street from Marion Square is one of the most vibrant sections of the city.

The Mid-Peninsula is the area bounded by Calhoun Street on the south and the axis formed by Fishburne Street and the Crosstown Expressway on the north. Marion Square was created in 1882 at the southern edge of the Mid-Peninsula as a parade ground for The Citadel. It now serves as the center of much of the city’s public life. The neighborhoods of Cannonborough and Elliotborough were settled by Irish and German immigrants, while the East Side neighborhood was settled by both immigrants and free African Americans attracted to opportunities created by nearby industries. The early nineteenth-century neighborhoods of Mazyckborough, Wraggborough, and Radcliffeborough are also in the Mid-Peninsula area.

The Cannonborough-Elliotborough neighborhood, as it is known today, is the current creative center of historic Charleston. It is a vibrant, mixed-use community dense with historic homes and new infill development. Former corner stores are now restaurants or coffee shops, places where people meet and generate ideas that make Charleston a creative place. One resident informed the author that he could walk to more than forty non-franchise restaurants, three bakeries, and a half dozen coffee shops in less than five minutes.58

The Upper Peninsula is primarily residential. The area developed after the Civil War as a home for freedmen and other refugees seeking employment in the city. It became a streetcar suburb in the late-1800s as new lines gave it quick access to the Lower Peninsula. It is this area that was most disrupted by highway construction in the late 1960s.

Neighborhoods in the Upper Peninsula developed with a mix of racial and economic patterns. Hampton Park Terrace, which developed between 1914 and 1930, drew higher-income residents to its Craftsman houses with a standardized minimum house value. Wagener Terrace developed as a White middle-class neighborhood. Both neighborhoods later became increasingly African American. Now they are integrated.59

The Neck is situated between Mt. Pleasant Street and the North Charleston city limits. A historically industrial area, it was home to phosphate works, fertilizer plants, and the Standard Oil Company. The area was annexed to Charleston in the 1970s.

The term “historic district” may refer to any of several designations at the city, county, state, or federal level. The City of Charleston has created three local historic districts to regulate development: the Old and Historic, the Old City–Lower, and the Old City–Upper districts. These three city-designated districts are “zoning overlays” that apply to the city’s zoning map. Development within the overlay districts requires review and approval by the city’s Board of Architectural Review.

The three city-designated historic districts are separate from its four National Register Districts: the Charleston Historic District, the French Quarter Historic District, the Hampton Park Terrace Historic District, and the Ashley River Historic District. The three city-designated historic district boundaries align closely with those of the first two National Register Districts (NRDs).

In addition to the city-designated historic districts and the NRDs, there is a larger National Historic Landmark District (NHLD) that encompasses most of the other districts, excluding the Hampton Park Terrace and Ashley River districts. The NHLD designation is highly prestigious, and only a very small percentage of NRDs receive that designation. Statistical profiles on these three types of districts can be found in the Volume II supplement.

Many of Charleston’s historic architectural resources are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Historic neighborhoods on the National Register are listed in the Volume II supplement. In addition to the historic neighborhoods listed in the chart, there are also many individual contributing structures and facilities that are listed on the National Register.

Structures include the William Aiken House and railroad structures, Ashley Hall Plantation, William Enston Home, and the Porter Military Academy. Military facilities include, Charleston Navy Yard Historic District and the Navy Yard Officers’ Quarters Historic District.

Architectural styles include Colonial (1690–1740), Georgian (1700–1790), Federal (1790–1820), Greek Revival (1820–1875), Italianate (1830–1900), Gothic Revival (1840–1885), Queen Anne (1860–1916), and Art Deco (1920–1940). Architectural styles and contributing structures are evolving compositions built over the years. As such, designations change and new structures of architectural significance are continuously added to the inventory (provided they are a minimum of fifty years old).

The National Park Service began designating National Landmarks in Charleston in the 1960s, with the largest number added the following decade. Three additional National Landmarks have been added since the 1970s. A list of National Landmarks can be found in in the Volume II supplement.

Historical and Cultural Resources in the Savannah Area

Savannah is also richly endowed with historic and cultural attractions. The Savannah History Museum is located in the Central of Georgia Railway Train Shed in Tricentennial Park, near the Georgia State Railroad Museum located in the old Central of Georgia Railway Savannah Shops and Terminal Facilities. The Jepson Center for the Arts and the Telfair Academy are located on Telfair Square. In addition to the Academy, the Telfair Museums also have holdings in the Jepson and the Owens-Thomas House. The Telfair was the first public art museum in the South. The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art is a contemporary art museum. The Massie Heritage Center exhibitions highlighting Savannah’s renowned architectural history are located on Calhoun Square.

Many former residences are now museums or historic venues. The Andrew Low House on Lafayette Square, designed by architect John Norris, was the residence of Andrew Low and his family in mid-1800s; Low was the father-in-law of Juliette Gordon Low, Founder of the Girl Scouts. The Juliette Gordon Low birthplace located a few blocks away is owned and operated by the Girl Scouts, and is their national headquarters. The Harper Fowlkes House in Orleans Square is the headquarters for the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Georgia, a military-oriented organization established at the end of the Revolutionary War. The Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum Located on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard displays full galleries of ship models as well as nautical paintings and artifacts. The Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, also on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, recounts the history of Georgia’s civil rights movement; the building once housed the Wage Earners Savings and Loan Bank, the largest African American bank in the county.

Other attractions include the Savannah Children’s Museum located in Tricentennial Park; the Savannah African Art Museum located on 37th Street in the Thomas Square Streetcar Historic District; the Savannah Ogeechee Canal Society museum located south of the city near the Ogeechee River; the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, exhibiting aircraft, images, and medals from the 8th Air Force; and the Oatland Island Wildlife Center Whitemarsh Island outside the city preserve with dozens of species in natural habitats, plus education programs. The National Monuments of Fort Jackson and Fort Pulaski on the Savannah River are described in the section on historic preservation.

Other Lowcountry Attractions

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor includes five sites in Georgia: Geechee Kunda Museum in Riceboro; Cumberland Island National Seashore; Cumberland Island; Dorchester Academy Boys’ Dormitory in Midway; Sapelo Island; and Harris Neck. Also notable is the Pinpoint Heritage Museum in Savannah.

Beaufort County, South Carolina, located between Charleston and Savannah, recently launched two initiatives that link historical resource tourism, cultural tourism, and ecotourism. The Santa Elena History Center, located in the City of Beaufort, was established to preserve and promote Santa Elena, the first European colonial capital (see chapter 2). The archaeological site of Santa Elena is located on Parris Island, one of two Marine Corps Recruit Depots in the United States, which allows public access. The Marine Corps Museum on Parris Island also contains exhibits on Santa Elena archaeology, and a trail system around the archaeological site adds an element of ecotourism to the experience.

The second Beaufort County–based initiative is the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, which was established by President Barack Obama in January, 2017. The presidential proclamation acknowledges the central role of the Lowcountry during this era,

The Reconstruction Era began when the first United States soldiers arrived in slaveholding territories, and enslaved people on plantations and farms and in cities escaped from their owners and sought refuge with Union forces or in free states. This happened in November 1861 in the Sea Islands or “Lowcountry” of southeastern South Carolina, and Beaufort County in particular.60

The new National Park is being developed in conjunction with established museums and programs in the Lowcountry, including Penn Center on St. Helena Island (a nucleus of Gullah culture), located on the site of one of the first southern schools organized by northern missionaries for emancipated slaves. Beaufort Mayor Billy Keyserling, one of the prime movers behind the reconstruction initiative and son of Harriet Keyserling, is working to build a network of related institutions and programs throughout the region, as described in Keyserling’s book, Sharing Common Ground: Promises Unfulfilled but Not Forgotten, published in 2020. While authorities on Reconstruction, such as the historian Eric Foner, Keyserling weaves together his perspective as the descendant of Jewish immigrants with a commitment to spotlight the story of Reconstruction in the Lowcountry.

The growth of tourism in its various forms is uniting the Lowcountry between Charleston and Savannah into a cultural and historical destination. Reflections on the future this portends can be found in the conclusion to the next and final chapter.

An area that has not been fully developed, but has recently become a priority for the industry, is that of international tourism. The Charleston area hosted only 132,000 foreign visitors in 2017, ranking 52nd among U.S. destinations. By contrast, Orlando had 4.7 million, and the small island of Key West had 517,000 in what was an off-year due to Hurricane Irma.61

There are twelve historic districts in Savannah that are listed on the National Register, as shown in the chart below. They range chronologically from the originally planned area laid out in 1733, through various periods of expansion, to the mid-twentieth century. See the Volume II supplement for a full list of historic districts.

A number of individual contributing structures are also listed on the National Register. Those that have National Landmark status include the Green-Meldrim House, the Andrew Low House (home of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts), the Owens-Thomas House, and the William Scarbrough House.

Others on the National Register include the Cord Asendorf House, Charity Hospital, the Isaiah Davenport House, the Drouillard-Maupas House, the Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, First Bryan Baptist Church, Hill Hall at Savannah State College, Hodgson Hall (home of the Georgia Historical Society), Lebanon Plantation House, Massie Common School House, Mickve Israel Synagogue, New Ogeechee Missionary Baptist Church, and the Slotin Building. As noted in the list for Charleston, the vast majority of historic homes and other structures are not listed on the National Register.

Architectural styles of historical significance include, Neoclassical (mid-1800s), Regency, Queen Anne (1860–1916), Second Empire (1865–1900), Folk Victorian (1870–1910), Beaux-Arts (early 1900s), International (1920–1940), Art Deco (1920–1940), Moderne (1925–1950), and pre-1940s residential and commercial vernacular buildings. The Colonial and Georgian styles found in Charleston are rare in Savannah, which has only a handful of buildings from the 1700s.

Industrial sites on the National Register include Central of Georgia Depot and Trainshed, and several other railroad facilities (a large complex west of the National Historic Landmark District); Savannah and Ogeechee Canal (just west of the Central of Georgia complex; and the site of the Ironclad Ram Georgia.

Parks, cemeteries, and forts listed on the National Register include Bonaventure Cemetery, Daffin Park, Fort James Jackson (Fort Oglethorpe), Fort Pulaski National Monument, Laurel Grove–North Cemetery, and Laurel Grove-South Cemetery.

National Register Districts are generally large areas, such as a neighborhood, that contain common architectural, cultural, or historical elements. The Juliette Gordon Low NRD, also an NHL, is an anomaly that consists of three buildings in two separate locations, the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace (the Wayne-Gordon House), the Andrew Low House, and the First Girl Scout Headquarters (formerly the carriage house of the Andrew Low House); all three structures are located within Savannah’s National Historic Landmark District.

In the late 1860s, horse-drawn and rail streetcars were extended south from the area laid out in traditional wards enabling the development of the city’s first suburb, now known as the Victorian Historic District. The first extension of development into the former farm lots occurred in 1870. One such area near Ogeechee Road ran southwest past an 1867 development by Dr. Louis A. Falligant, a physician, who was concerned with the welfare of recently emancipated enslaved people. The area became known as Brownsville (or Brownville, without the “s”). The community is listed on the National Register as the Cuyler-Brownsville Historic District.

The replacement of “horsecar” trollies with electric streetcars in 1891 hastened the extension of the city southward, beyond normal walking distance. New architectural styles, including Arts and Crafts and American Foursquare, were introduced into these new neighborhoods. Larger yards, sometimes including front yards, also became common. This first suburb is now the Thomas Square Streetcar Historic District. Extension of the streetcar lines eastward led to the development of more new neighborhoods such as the Eastside-Collinsville-Meadows Historic District, which flourished on former farmlands.

Further south, Bull Street forms the western boundary of the Ardsley Park–Chatham Crescent Historic District, two early-twentieth-century planned automobile suburbs, significant for the incorporation of multiple public parks, architecture, and streetscaping. Further east and south of these neighborhoods are Parkside and Ardmore, two additional automobile suburbs built with park amenities.

Gordonston, located a mile-and-a-half southeast of the NHLD, was laid out by Juliette Gordon Low and her brothers in the early twentieth century on her family’s farmlands. An eight-acre park and radiating streets anchor the neighborhood dominated by Colonial Revival, Neo-Classical, and Arts and Crafts style houses. The neighborhood was on the streetcar line to Thunderbolt, a small now-incorporated community overlooking the estuarine Wilmington River.

The Fairway Oaks–Greenview neighborhood is an early post-WWII suburb in the Mid-City area. On the city’s south side, the small colonial village of Vernonburg was incorporated in 1742 by German indentured servants, and it remains a tiny municipality today.

Isle of Hope is a historic neighborhood situated on the Skidaway River facing the Intracoastal Waterway. Wormsloe Plantation was the first part of the island to be settled. Many antebellum homes were built on the waterfront, which became lined with homes after a streetcar line was constructed from downtown Savannah. Scenes in a number of Hollywood films have been shot on the picturesque island, including Cape Fear, Forrest Gump, and Glory.

The small, historic community of Pin Point is about four miles south of Isle of Hope in unincorporated Chatham County. It was founded by Gullah-speaking formerly enslaved people freed after the Civil War. The Pin Point Heritage Museum located in a former oyster canning factory offers a slice of Gullah/Geechee history and folkways. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was born in Pin Point.

In addition to its large National Register historic districts and historic communities, Savannah has several National Landmarks (see the Volume II Supplement). The first to be designated was Fort Pulaski (1924), which is located in the Savannah River channel outside the city limits. Central of Georgia Railway: Savannah Shops and Terminal Facilities is a separate NHLD continuous with Savannah’s Historic District and its principal NHLD. The district is the most extensive antebellum railroad complex in the nation.

Fort Jackson and Fort Pulaski were constructed on the Savannah River downstream from the city in the early 1800s to defend Savannah from attack by sea. During the Civil War, both forts were first held by Confederate forces and later taken by the Union Army. Fort Jackson was renamed Fort Oglethorpe in 1884 and reverted to the original name in 1905; it was restored by the City of Savannah in the 1970s and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000.

The Owens–Thomas House and Slave Quarters was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976. The house was designed by the English architect William Jay in the style of houses in Bath, England. The Revolutionary War general, the Marquis de Lafayette, addressed the citizens of Savannah from a balcony of the house while on tour in 1825. The house is owned and operated by Telfair Museums.

William Scarbrough House, also designed by architect William Jay, was built in 1819. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973. It houses the Savannah’s Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum.

The Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences building, another William Jay design, was built in 1818 and made a National Historic Landmark in 1976. Along with the Owens-Thomas House, it is owned and operated by Telfair Museums.

Charleston Area Historic Plantations

Lowndes Grove Plantation is the only surviving plantation house on the Charleston Peninsula. McLeod Plantation on James Island near the peninsula is a historical plantation with a mansion, slave cabins, and grounds maintained by the county and open to the public. Boone Hall Plantation located in Mt. Pleasant is privately owned and open to the public; slave quarters and other elements have been preserved. Oakland Plantation in Mt. Pleasant is privately owned. Vestiges of Long Point Plantation form the Dorothy Kearns Park in Mt. Pleasant. All the other plantations near Charleston are in the upper Ashley River area. Drayton Hall and Magnolia Plantation are privately owned and open to the public. Middleton Place is owned and operated by a private foundation that offers tours, educational activities, and operates an on-site inn. Marshlands plantation house was originally located on the Naval Base and was relocated to the site of the Hollings Marine Laboratory on James Island. The Fenwick Hall plantation house located on John’s Island is privately owned.

St. Giles Kussoe, the plantation owned by Anthony Ashley Cooper (considered the founder of Carolina), is an archaeological site on the Ashley River. Also known as the Lord Ashley site, the plantation was established circa 1674 on the Ashley River, twenty-five miles from Charleston. Ashley Cooper, who became the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury in 1672, did not live to visit or live in Carolina; the plantation was maintained by his representatives.

Savannah Area Historic Plantations

Although Savannah was once surrounded by rice plantations, few of them survive as historic sites. Lebanon Plantation, located approximately ten miles southeast of downtown Savannah, is a privately owned working farm. Grove Point is a privately owned former plantation site open for events and various activities. Wormsloe State Historic Site contains the tabby ruins of Wormsloe, the colonial estate of Noble Jones (1702–1775), who arrived in Georgia with Oglethorpe.

6. Historical Elements of City Form and Character

Interviews with historic preservationists, architects, builders, and city planners, among others, were conducted to obtain a wide-lens perspective on how history, environment and other unique elements present in Charleston and Savannah influenced city form and character. The findings were combined into the following seven categories.

Historicity

Many respondents interviewed in both cities expressed alarm about new hotel construction and other forms of development that are altering the more fine-grained historic character of their city. For many decades, preservation and tourism enjoyed a symbiotic relationship; but now that relationship appears to be deteriorating.

Charleston has preserved more of its colonial built environment than Savannah, giving the impression of being an older city. Its “single house” with a front door leading to the piazza and side yard, adds a unique look and offers passersby a glimpse through ironwork gates and fencing into the inner world of its occupants. Charleston’s grand double houses of the Lower Peninsula reveal a far greater concentration of wealth than was ever-present in Savannah. The city’s National Historic Landmark District, designated as such for its historicity, is one-third larger than that of Savannah (although Savannah has a larger contiguous area of National Register districts).

The lack of a durable city plan to guide development on the Peninsula resulted in a higher degree of spatial disorganization, and in that respect the older city is the polar opposite of Savannah. Charleston does not have a single, well-defined central business district, but rather is multi-centric with several nodes and corridors of intensive land use interspersed with quieter neighborhoods. The Charleston waterfront, its earliest focus of wealth, was lined with tiers of warehouses, offices, and grand homes such as those on Rainbow Row. Arterial streets radiating from this source of wealth (East Bay, Meeting, and King streets) were lengthened over time and became the city’s principal commercial corridors.

Charleston’s modern structures often seem out-of-context (“sore thumbs”). Larger commercial and public buildings are spatially disorganized, reflecting the lack of an effective city plan during the early era of high-rise development. Without an established pattern or “rhythm” of mass and scale, it is difficult to locate newer high-rise development in compatible contexts. Abrupt changes to the rhythm of the built environment may persist indefinitely as more large hotels, in particular, are approved.

Savannah’s historicity has as much to do with the preservation of its founding plan as with its extensive nineteenth-century built environment. The city’s character resides in the fusion of its plan, the open space prescribed by the plan, an extensive urban forest, its architecture, and its functionality as a working city.

The benchmark set by Oglethorpe on the bluff above the river, from which the town was laid out, established an urban form that has been preserved through the generations. Johnson Square, immediately south of that point was the town’s first central meeting place. It is now the heart of the city’s central business district. A new city hall was built on Bay Street over the original benchmark in 1900. Right-of-way for an arterial running east and west from the benchmark became a growth corridor lined with trade merchants; in modern times it transformed into a corridor of offices and hotels that are generally compatible with the mass and scale of earlier development. To the south of Johnson Square, a parallel arterial separating the first and second tier of wards became a commercial corridor and eventually the city’s “main street,” Broughton Street. A north-south axis, Bull Street, was established by the original benchmark. Running south through Johnson Square, and eventually four other squares, it formed a corridor for prominent buildings and civic monuments, including the Oglethorpe statue on Chippewa Square, fittingly located in the geometric center of the Landmark District. Bull Street now extends four miles from City Hall, forming the central axis of three historic districts.

In locating major development at the central node and along the principal axes of the Oglethorpe Plan, and adopting design standards to complement that basic layout, Savannah has developed in a more spatially organized fashion and has fewer clashes between new construction and historical context. Late twentieth-century hotel development largely formed a street-wall extending east and west from the existing CBD. Building heights taper outward from Johnson Square and gracefully downward from the Bay and Broughton street axes southward for a distance of four miles.

Urban Authenticity

The authenticity of a city is the extent to which its normal urban functions are maintained. Many respondents in both cities expressed concern that traditional, working residents are being displaced by the transient population of tourists, absentee homeowners, and a non-resident (commuter) workforce more vested in the suburbs and exurbs than the historic core. In addition to a traditional workforce, both urban cores have large creative populations that add value to the urban environment that is difficult to quantify. One Savannah respondent the loss of such populations: “There is a danger of losing its soul and the uniqueness that makes it special.” By the time authorities figure this out, some fear, it will be too late to change course.

Charleston’s Peninsula population is near a historic low as its traditional and creative populations are pushed out. While the city has made it a priority to reverse the tide, it remains to be seen whether a stable residential population base can be restored. New infill development has brought down rents, but this may be a temporary effect. One respondent who lives in a historic neighborhood reported that of the twelve residential units in his block, only three are occupied year-round. This represents a problem for public safety (the need for “eyes on the street”) as well as a threat to community character. Another problem created by the lack of workforce housing is that of congestion—the more people who have to commute to work the worse the traffic.

Savannah has also seen a decline in workforce housing as units are purchased for second homes, and as smaller residential units (“short-term vacation rentals”) are increasingly rented to transients rather than locals. By not maintaining a supply of housing for traditional workers and creatives, Charleston and Savannah will sustain higher costs for road improvement and public transportation to accommodate more commuters. Public safety costs may also increase as the aware and concerned residential population diminishes and crime increases proportionately.

Europeanness and Africanness

Several respondents noted a “Europeanness” about Savannah that they believed to be unique in the United States. It was compared to Quebec City in Canada, which also has a uniquely European flavor. Some of the common attributes cited were a slower-paced, easier lifestyle, walkable mixed environment, landscaped boulevards, and numerous public spaces.

An official in Charleston took the opposite position, arguing that European cities historically begin with a core and grow organically, which has been the case with his city. Savannah, on the other hand, by virtue of being planned has less of an Old World feel. Charleston, he added, is aged and weathered. It is on softer earth that moves, and there have been earthquakes. It has had hurricanes and fires, and it floods. It is more exposed to the elements and more aged as a result. While Charleston’s detached homes place it in the New World almost by definition, everything else about it seems Old World in character.

An alternative view expressed by respondents was that both sides are partially correct. Savannah is very much like the idealized European cities of Renaissance designers such as Alberti, Cataneo, da Vinci, Scamozzi, and Vasari, all of whom developed models of the ideal city. Charleston, on the other hand, may be more like ancient, organic European cities that grew incrementally and somewhat haphazardly, perhaps even in some places at times under the guidance of a city plan.

The Africanness of Charleston is everywhere. It is engrained in the city’s character, embedded in its historic structures, and deeply structured in its way of life.

Physical Formality

There are aspects of physical formality and informality that are part of the character of each city, about which respondents from both cities were in agreement. Charleston has a less formal “ancient,” medieval-like feel engendered by its narrower and sometimes oddly angled streets and the patina of age. In some ways, in some neighborhoods, it is richer in detail than Savannah. Its streets, public spaces, and architecture are, on the whole, less formal. Were it not for consistency in architectural styles, particularly the single house, Charleston might have a haphazard appearance. As Christina Rae Butler shows in Dry at High Water, much of the Peninsula’s built environment was developed on an ad hoc basis.

The built environment of Savannah is more formal appearing as a result of the influence of the Oglethorpe Plan in structuring the use of space. All streets in the planned Landmark District meet at right angles. Street widths have a precise hierarchy, as do sidewalks. Buildings have a precise orientation to streets, squares, and other public spaces. All twenty-two functioning squares have the same design, although their size varies slightly. Many street vistas are pleasantly terminated by canopied squares or lined by canopied medians. Savannah’s “lanes” (alleys) are places where garbage receptacles, construction materials, and utilities are located, keeping streets more orderly and attractive and sidewalks more open to pedestrians.

Both cities are surprising and intriguing in their fine detail. Charleston is particularly surprising with its unpredictability and medieval-like street segments and passageways. Savannah, by contrast, may be less surprising because of its orderliness, but is equally intriguing with the combination of its historic built environment, inviting public spaces, and cooling urban forest.

Social Formality

Charleston is the more socially formal of the two cities. Some Savannahians have choice words for the elitism they have encountered among their neighbors. It can seem snobbier and ruder, and its politeness is often contrived, they say. There is a Rolls-Royce dealership in West Ashley, rare in a small city, they point out. Outsiders, even their neighbors from Savannah, face animosity when attempting to do business in Charleston. There is an aristocratic, even “royalist” attitude. Ancestry bragging, one Savannahian observed, is still common. Yet the manners and etiquette for which the South is noted originated in the “charade” of Charleston’s formalized society. For their part, younger Charlestonians recognize that elitism persists; but most see it as declining. Many are more concerned with building the next generation of egalitarian and socially progressive Peninsula residents.

Savannah is more sociable, more easy-going, according to respondents from both cities. The urban forest and public spaces make it easier to meet and interact in informal ways. There is a culture of civility associated with the city’s civic space. Alfresco dining is more prevalent in Savannah. You can walk down the street with a drink in your hand, and in that way, Savannah is more like New Orleans and Key West. Savannah is a pedestrian paradise.

Wealth

Charleston’s relative wealth, maintained throughout most of its history, is another source of differences according to respondents. Charleston is the richer, older sister; but she can be “jealous,” in the words of one respondent. She does not appreciate competitors and pretenders.

Wealth based in large part on slavery and African rice-growing technology defined Charleston and made it the wealthiest city in North America through the colonial era and beyond. Deriving wealth from rice made Charleston and its Lowcounty hinterland a slave society with a peculiar cultural economy and political culture. But the complex physical and social environment created by that culture produced much of value that would endure to the present and thrive in today’s more egalitarian society.

Savannah has mostly been less wealthy, although there were times, such as the heyday of the steamboat era, when it rivaled its older sister. Although Charleston exported its slave society to Savannah, the poorer sister retained vestiges of her formative egalitarianism, and it has never been quite as elitist and class conscious. Currently, Savannah is rivaling Charleston as a destination for elite tourists and vacation home investors. It has the potential to become a wealthy city, but it faces a significant challenge in linking the engines of growth to all segments of its society and sharing the wealth.

The notion that society is divided into “makers” and “takers,” long harbored by the financial elite, has been brought into question by economists who have studied income inequality, including Mariana Mazzucato, Branko Milanović, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. The maker/taker divide has served the interests of wealthy investors who are often able to convince city officials that their participation is essential to economic advancement. In truth, local investment in areas such as the arts and historic preservation adds more value to the economy than that of out-of-town investors whose profits end up being part of the vast reservoir of wealth maintained in offshore tax havens. Local policymakers who recognize this will place more weight (or at least equal weight) on local contributions to the economy than outside investment.

Race and class

The rise, fall, and reinvention of Charleston and Savannah are phases of their history tied closely to race and class. Any meaningful comparison of the two cities must account for that connection. Although Charleston has reinvented itself in modern times, projecting an image of a diverse and inclusive society, race and class remain strong undercurrents in local society. Elitism can be seen in the mayor’s office, which has been held by well-connected members of the city’s upper class. While the 40-year tenure of Mayor Riley harnessed elitism for enlightened purposes, the city’s next phase of social advancement may require a new generation of leadership.

In Savannah, race more than class is the primary undercurrent in its society. A majority African American city (unlike Charleston, with a 74 percent White majority), Savannah has had four mayors from that demographic in recent times. Investment interests, however, have targeted the mayor’s office as a means of countering rising African American political power. The mayoralty election of 2015 was particularly fraught with racial messaging, ushering a White candidate into office. The mayoralty election of 2019 was less fraught with racial messaging and may signal a step forward in the city’s reinvention.

7. Affordable Housing

The greatest social equity challenge in preserving the historic core is maintaining a range of housing choices affordable to area residents. Providing affordable housing in historic districts in the face of gentrification and elitification is difficult but not impossible. The most obvious obstacle is the escalating cost of land and existing market-rate housing. All but wealthy buyers and renters are priced out of the market as hotels, high-end condominiums, and luxury apartments push aside all other forms of new construction. Conversions of existing properties focus on the lucrative short-term rental market, thereby reducing the availability of housing for people working in the historic core. Housing costs are also driven up by the strict regulations found in most historic districts. The review process is often time-consuming and costly. Height limits mean that the cost per square foot for units is above the range of affordability. And, finally, architectural requirements further add to the final per-unit cost. Additionally, the high cost of navigating the regulatory process eliminates small, local developers from enriching the built environment with myriad forms of infill housing—the very kind of housing that historically added character to the district and made it attractive in the first place.

There are ways to overcome those structural obstacles and build character-compatible affordable housing in the historic districts of Charleston and Savannah. The first essential step is to achieve a consensus that sustainable affordable housing should be part of the historic core. That is, year-round residents who want to live and work in the historic core should be able to do so. The second essential step is to refine that aspiration to identify the forms of housing that should be available in the local market. Options include rental and owner-occupied, single-family and multi-family, and small households and large households.

Once the policy is in place, then the technical pieces can fall into place. There are five broad categories of affordable housing, each with its own set of technical pieces.

• New, large-scale construction
• New, small-medium scale infill construction
• Conversions of existing non-residential buildings
• Public/private partnerships that make use of tax credits and other echanisms to leverage affordable housing
• Public or private sector subsidized housing

To begin any such initiative, agreement must be reached among city officials, preservationists, and neighborhood stakeholder groups to allow specific affordable housing incentive variances. Without such an understanding, lengthy and costly review processes would undermine prospective developments. Height and density “bonuses” and specific design standards could be pre-established to expedite approval, recognizing that affordable housing is an essential piece of any plan for core area preservation. Historic preservationists, in particular, would need to be partners in the process to ensure that one aspect of preservation—design—does not undermine another aspect of preservation—affordable housing.

The first option is the most difficult, but also the most likely to produce the largest number of units at a given time. This option requires the city, or a partner, to obtain and donate land for mid- or high-rise development. The city or its partner would likely retain ownership of the land, and then contract to have a structure built on the site. A management firm would be retained to manage the property. Initial costs for this option are high. Some cities have established housing trust funds to amass the capital necessary to carry out this option. Revenue streams for housing trust funds can be developed through “linkage” programs that allow developers to attain maximum benefits allowable under the zoning ordinance only if they contribute to the fund or build affordable housing, which may be housing for their employees.

The second option can be achieved without a major new revenue stream through various forms of zoning bonuses coupled with streamlined review to create a suite of incentives. Of particular importance is creating a level playing field for local builders and designers to apply their creativity and intimate knowledge of the city to build housing for the local market. Once again, preservationists and stakeholders would have to be willing to work with builders and designers to create the incentives needed to reach policy objectives.

Converting existing buildings for local affordable housing has enormous potential, as demonstrated by the College of Charleston and Savannah College of Art & Design in converting dozens of dilapidated and underutilized buildings for institutional uses, including student housing. The city could issue a request for proposals for candidate sites, then conduct a charrette (a visioning and design workshop) to determine the potential of each.

The last two mechanisms listed above for producing affordable housing are familiar approaches to housing officials in both cities. They generally rely on federal and state funding and follow a script repeated over many times. These options will remain essential elements of each city’s armamentarium of housing initiatives.

This final word closes on the subject of affordable housing in the historic core because without it, the reinvention of Charleston and Savannah will not be sustained and its potential for a Third Reconstruction will not be attained. The future is clear: either the historic core will be an inclusive, vibrant, and creative nucleus of the region in which all residents take pride, or it will be an exclusive playground for wealthy visitors and occasional residents with whom those who live there feel little connection.

Current Initiatives

In Charleston and Savannah, a case is made that both cities are reinventing themselves for an age of diversity and social equity. A warning was also put forth in which it was pointed out that progress since the 1960s could be reversed by gentrification and elitification. Both cities appear to be aware of those challenges and are increasing efforts to produce more affordable housing in or near the care areas.

Charleston City Council passed an ordinance on August 18, 2020 relaxing zoning regulations for lot subdivision and construction of new single-family homes meeting affordable housing requirements set forth in the ordinance. On September 8, 2020, City Council approved an ordinance to permit Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) throughout the city. All such ADU rental units must meet affordable housing income and rental thresholds listed in the ordinance. The City has also recognized the need for affordable housing provisions in its various area planning initiatives, such as the Upper Peninsula Initiative.62

In Savannah, the City has partnered with private interests on several affordable housing initiatives. At the beginning of 2022, plans were in motion for approval of an “unprecedented” $19.1 million to address various affordable housing and homelessness initiatives. New funding ranges from a significant contribution to the Savannah Affordable Housing Fund to utilization of vacant city-owned property for housing, and for assistance for first-time home buyers.63

The City has also recognized that short-term vacation rentals (STVRs) are “hollowing out” historic neighborhoods and driving up housing costs while also reducing quality of life and the sense of community traditionally found in the city’s core neighborhoods.64

8. Higher Education

Charleston and Savannah are each home to three institutions of higher education, both also have technical colleges with training for careers in the hospitality industry, and both have campuses maintained by major research universities. The two largest campuses, the College of Charleston and Savannah College of Art and Design, are based in the historic core of each city.

The College of Charleston (CofC), founded in 1770, is the oldest city college in the United States. CofC is a public university supported by the State of South Carolina, and a National Sea Grant and a National Space Grant member institution. Like nearly all major state-supported institutions of higher education, CofC is partially self-sustaining, receiving a large share of its total funding from tuition, sponsored research, other contracts and grants, and donations. Colleges and universities count student enrollment in two ways, total full-time and part-time, and full-time equivalent (FTE). The FTE number is generally used for budgeting and facilities planning purposes.

The CofC main campus in downtown Charleston, in a 2018 inventory, included forty-four buildings, many of which are historic structures. In addition to its downtown campus, the college maintains a campus in North Charleston for non-traditional student programs, a nature preserve on the Stono River, and a sports complex in Mt. Pleasant.

The Medical University of South Carolina is a publicly supported medical school established in 1824. Its Mid-Peninsula campus is located just south of the Septima Clark Parkway (also known as the Crosstown Expressway). The central location contributes professional vibrancy to the historic district and promotes synergies with related professions.

The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, was established in 1842 and is one of six senior military colleges in the United States. The cadet corps numbers about 2,350 students. About 1,200 non-cadet students are enrolled in evening undergraduate and graduate degree courses. It is located in the Upper Peninsula.

Charleston Southern University, founded in 1964 as Baptist College, is an independent comprehensive university located in North Charleston. It had an enrollment of 3,600 students in 2019. It offers a wide range of majors. The College of Nursing and the School of Business are among its largest programs.

Collectively, the four institutions add more than 30,000 students, faculty members, and research professionals to the eight square mile peninsula and contiguous North Charleston.

Savannah College of Art and Design is a private institution of higher education offering bachelors and master degrees in a wide range of creative fields. The school’s main campus is in Savannah; smaller campuses are located in Atlanta, Hong Kong, and Lacoste, France. SCAD has expanded dramatically since its founding in 1978, and had a combined enrollment of more than 13,000 in the fall of 2019. The college has adopted a unique, decentralized approach in expanding its Savannah campus. It acquires mostly historic properties, often with little potential for other forms of adaptive reuse (e.g., hotels or condominiums). Taking advantage of its tax-exempt status, SCAD has been able to maintain high-quality historic properties without the tax burden shouldered by privately owned property in the city’s gentrifying historic districts.

The interface of art and design studies on the one hand, and historic preservation initiatives on the other, has been a remarkably beneficial formula for Savannah. Not only has SCAD renovated dozens of historic buildings, but their faculty are engaged in local preservation efforts, and students are often enlisted in preservation projects.

As with the College of Charleston, SCAD’s success has not come without adverse impacts. Chief among those is gentrification. While the college has endeavored to build student housing, much of which has come from redeveloping older motels in the downtown area, the student population still has pushed into the private market, competing with the service sector labor force, and creating upward pressure on rents for smaller rental units. As SCAD approaches an ideal size and growth levels off, the City of Savannah and other public institutions may be able to offset some of the impacts through affordable housing initiatives.

Georgia Southern University Armstrong Campus (formerly Armstrong State University) traces its roots to Armstrong Junior College, established by the City of Savannah in 1935 in the former mansion of shipping magnate George Armstrong (the original building is one of the most iconic in the National Historic Landmark District). The modern campus is located about nine miles south of the historic district.

Savannah State University (SSU) is a historically Black public university administered through the University System of Georgia. It is located on the eastern edge of Savannah on high bluffs overlooking tidal marsh. It was established in 1890 following enactment of the Second Morrill Land Grant Act, which provided that southern and border states should develop land-grant colleges for Black citizens. SSU served as Georgia’s land-grant institution until 1947. The university offers twenty-three accredited undergraduate baccalaureate and five graduate master’s degree programs. The university has over 4,400 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs.

Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, maintains a Savannah campus primarily for the purpose of collaborative ventures such as regional Enterprise Innovation Institute’s office for the Advanced Technology Development Center, the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Extension Partnership, and the Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center. In 2019, fewer than 100 students were enrolled in conventional classes at the Savannah campus.

South University is a professional degree institution with campuses in nine states as well as online course offerings. The curricula are primarily in the field of healthcare, with degree offerings in management, professional, and technical fields. Most degree programs are at the master’s level. In 2018, total enrollment at the Savannah campus was over 1,200 students.

Memorial Health University Medical Center provides accredited postdoctoral education and continuing education. The Medical Center offers six residency programs of new physician training.

9. Military Installations

The Armed Forces are a significant part of the local economy of both Charleston and Savannah. Joint Base (JB) Charleston is located partly in the City of North Charleston, and the cities of Hanahan and Goose Creek in Berkeley County. The facility is under the jurisdiction of the United States Air Force 628th Air Base Wing, Air Mobility Command. JB Charleston supports sixty-seven Military Commands and Federal Agencies as of 2019, including Charleston Air Force Base, Charleston Naval Weapons Station, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic, and the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Charleston District), and Coast Guard Sector Charleston.