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to assist your research ~
more remarkable towns
on the coast |
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| Beaufort, SC |
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| Bluffton |
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| Brunswick Islands |
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| Charleston and its Resort Islands |
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| Conway |
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| Edisto Island |
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| Georgetown |
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| Hilton Head Island |
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| Mount Pleasant |
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| North Myrtle Beach |
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| Myrtle Beach |
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| Northeast North Carolina: Edenton, New Bern, Elizabeth City, Hertford |
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| Outer Banks |
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| Pawleys Island/Litchfield |
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| Savannah, Georgia |
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| Southport |
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| Washington |
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| Whiteville |
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| Wilmington |
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If you want to live in a postcard,
consider the Colonial Lake neighborhood in Charleston. South Carolina’s
oldest city has enchanted visitors since 1670, the state’s official birth year.
Many of those visitors have become residents, bewitched by the ever-present
nearness of water, be it river, lake, marsh or ocean.
Photo by Ron Rocz |
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| Charleston & Its Resort Islands |
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he cobbled streets in old Charleston are perfect for a casual stroll past rainbow-colored homes and stately mansions.
Sometimes, when Linda Schunk is taking her walk, she enjoys glimpses of manicured gardens behind wrought-iron gates. She’ll pause to watch the weavers of sweetgrass baskets, or stand on the
historic battery and gaze toward the horizon where ocean and sky seem to meet.
“Charleston is such a beautiful city. I like walking downtown and being a tourist,” she says. “And I love going home.”
Her own piece of Charleston is the first house built in Etiwan Park on Daniel Island six years ago amid massive oaks
and graceful palms.
Now there are 600 or so, and John and Linda Schunk no longer have the only
streetlight on the island by any means.
But she still has the sense of wonder she felt the day she
first crossed a rickety bridge and caught, with her decorator’s eye, the vision of the neighborhood to come.
Since moving to Charleston from Chicago in 1996, the Schunks have become cheerleaders for the side of the city that most people don’t know about, its livability for nearly 310,000 people who have homes in Charleston and surrounding Charleston County.
“It’s not just a place to visit,” says Mrs. Schunk. “It’s a wonderful place to live.”
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teeped in its own history like sweet tea, Charleston is South Carolina’s oldest city and the place the Civil War began. Reminders of the past are everywhere. Fort Sumter in the harbor is now a national park, newly refurbished with iron gates and a fountain. In a nearby laboratory, there are archaeologists painstakingly sifting the secrets of The Hunley, a Confederate submarine that sank after taking out a Yankee ship by stealth in 1864. The Hunley was lifted from the murky waters off the coast of Charleston in August, 2000.
Writer Brian Hicks was on vacation in Charleston when the discovery of The Hunley was announced, and his fascination with the news event is one thing that later led him to move to Charleston and its grand old daily newspaper, The Post and Courier. He’s written a book about The Hunley with colleague Schuyler Kropf.
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“Charleston is such a beautiful city. I like walking downtown and being a tourist,” she says. “And I love going home.”
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“Charleston is one of those places where you vacation and fantasize about what it’s like to live there,” says the writer, who did just that before making the move from Nashville five years ago. He and his wife Beth are living out one of their fantasies in a West Ashley home that overlooks the Stono River.
They found coastal housing costs pricey but offset by lower taxes and other costs of living. Above all, the couple decided it was a good place to rear a child. They’ve become members of the Charleston County Public Parks Program, which offers plenty of activities to keep youngsters and parents occupied. The $69 million South Carolina Aquarium on the waterfront is just a quick drive from the Joseph P. Riley Park.
The people who live here – not all of them children – play outdoors most of the year in a mild climate, says Mr. Hicks. Charleston has the ocean, of course, as well as the Ashley, Cooper and Stono rivers, Intracoastal Waterway, and the ACE Wildlife Basin.
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Charleston has so many museums, gardens, plantations, and other places to
learn about its
colorful past.
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Bill Settlemyer, a “recovering lawyer” who now publishes and edits the
Charleston Regional Business Journal,
has chronicled the good, the bad and even the ugly about Charleston since 1996, but is quick to say why he is sometimes critical of the city he chose during a “mid-life crisis” some 20 years ago. Mr. Settlemyer left a lucrative career with a Philadelphia insurance company to live in the city of his dreams. Now, he says, through his work he can help guide the area he loves to a better future.
Over the years, he says he’s seen Charleston’s transition from a stagnant, albeit atmospheric, Southern town to the progressive, modern city that saw 3,739 housing construction permits that were issued last year in Charleston, Dorchester and Berkeley, the three counties that encompass Charleston and its bedroom communities.
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Already a prime area for professions, especially medicine and law, Charleston is
beginning to woo
high-tech companies.
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Already a prime area for professions, especially medicine and law, Charleston is beginning to woo
high-tech companies. And the Medical University of South Carolina is transferring medical research
to private, spin-off companies. "We have some hope of building a biomedical industry here in the
private sector," Mr. Settlemyer informs.
On a balance sheet, the positives outweigh the negatives in Charleston, he says: "If it's not the most
beautiful place in the country, I'm not sure what is."
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Margaret N. O'Shea is a retired journalist who
now investigates legal cases for lawyers. She was a newspaper reporter for 37 years,
nominated four times for a Pulitzer Prize and three times named South Carolina Journalist
of the Year by the Society of Professional Journalists. She lives in Columbia and continues to write.
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