Proceed east in Broad Street. No. 73 is the site of Lee’s Hotel, known also as the Mansion House, “kept by a dignified and distinguished looking mulatto, once the most fashionable hotel in the city and probably the best kept and most expensive,” said William G. Whilden in his Reminiscences. Across the street (No. 62) is the Confederate Home which before the War for Southern Independence was the Carolina Hotel, a noted caravansary. At the northwest corner of Broad and Church Streets, is the Chamber of Commerce, oldest in the country, organized in 1773; this was the old South Carolina Bank building, later the home of the Charleston Library Society, which moved into modern quarters, elsewhere on this stroll. At the northeast corner is the Citizens and Southern Bank, on the site of Shepheard’s Tavern, birthplace of Ancient Free Masonry in America, Solomon’s Lodge, No. 1, having been chartered by the Grand Lodge of England in 1735, and birthplace also of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Free Masonry, 1801. A block to the eastward, at the foot of Broad Street, is the Old Exchange, as historic a building as there is in all America.

Northward on Church Street, at the southeast corner of Church and Queen, the only Huguenot church in America! Opposite, on the southwest corner, the restored Planters’ Hotel (1803), including the reproduction of Charleston’s first regular theater (1735), the company of players coming direct from England. North of Queen Street, on the west side, the reputed Pirates’ houses. St. Philip’s graveyard is divided by Church Street, running through the foundations of the building burned in 1835. The first St. Philip’s was on the site now occupied by St. Michael’s and the present St. Philip’s is the third. In the graveyards sleep, Edward Rutledge, Signer of the Declaration of Independence; William Rhett, captor of the notorious pirate, Stede Bonnet, 1718; Christopher Gadsden, Revolutionary patriot; John Caldwell Calhoun, eminent statesman.

Proceed through the western yard. You are paralleling the northern boundary of old Charles Town, a matter of yards away. You are in the Gateway Walk of the Garden Club. Midway of the yard, you are behind the first brick house in Charles Town, that of Judge Nicholas Trott; it was standing in 1719. Next to the Trott House is Charles Town’s oldest building, the Powder Magazine, 1703, owned and used by the Colonial Dames of America. Into the yard of the Circular Church, cradle of Presbyterianism in Carolina. Illustrious dead are buried here. The newspaper building to the south is on the site of the South Carolina Institute Hall, in which the Ordinance of Secession was signed December 20, 1860, and in which, several months before, the famous Democratic convention of 1860 was held. You come to Meeting Street, the Circular Church as the White Meeting House giving its name. Down Meeting Street, at the southwestern corner of Queen, is the St. John Hotel, on the site of the old St. Mary's Hotel, opened in 1801; General Robert E. Lee and President Theodore Roosevelt were of the notables who have been guests of this house.

At Meeting Street you are at the western edge of old Charles Town. Cross the street and pass through the yard of the Gibbes Memorial Art Gallery, a section of the old Schenking Square. Thence into the yard, of the Charleston Library Society, dating to 1748, among the oldest in the land. You come now to King Street. Down the street on the east side of the next block is the Quaker burial ground and site of the meeting houses that were burned. Cross King Street into the walk of the Unitarian Church, its building used by the British during their occupation in the Revolution for stables, and, to the north, the first Lutheran church, St. John’s. You come to Archdale Street, named for pious John Archdale, Quaker, Proprietor and Governor. Go southward to Queen Street, at the corner of Legare (it used to be Friend, reminiscent of the early Quakers in the colony) is the convent of Our Lady of Mercy, a community of consecrated Sisters, now more than a hundred years old. Opposite the convent, in Legare Street, is the Crafts public school, memorial to William Crafts.

On the left, at the corner of Broad Street, is the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, on the site of the Cathedral of St. Finbar and St. John, burned in 1861; here Bishop John M. England built the first St. Finbar’s on the site of the Vauxhall gardens. Go east in Broad Street. No. 119 (south side) is the residence of Irving Keith Heyward with one of Charleston’s finest formal gardens. Next door, to the east, is a property once occupied by Edward Rutledge.

On the north side of Broad Street, No. 118, is the site of St. Andrew’s Society hall in which President James Monroe and the Marquis de Lafayette were guests of the city, Monroe in 1819 and Lafayette in 1825; in which the Ordinance of Secession was adopted December 20, 1860. Next door, No. 116, is the former house of John Rutledge, “The Dictator,” later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; here President William Howard Taft was the guest of Robert Goodwyn Rhett. No. 114, once the home of Colonel Thomas Pinckney, is the residence of the Bishop of Charleston, the Most Reverend Emmet Walsh. No. 112 is the Ralph Izard house; the coach house in the yard is one of the most picturesque in Charleston. This neighborhood was in Mr. Hollybush’s farm, just outside of old Charles Town. No. 100 Broad Street was at one time the residence of James Louis Petigru.

You come again to the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets and remember that here in 1876 occurred violent Reconstruction riots; that in the Revolution, years before, the statue of William Pitt was in the center and that a British shell struck off an arm. You who have followed me on this incomparable walk have seen things of Charles Town, Charlestown and Charleston. You have seen things reminiscent of early English and early French. You have seen the evolution of a British outpost in a savage land into what William Allen White has called “the most civilized town in America.”