Around the lake

Colonial Lake, Charleston, SC 

We've enjoyed dramatic blue skies and billowy clouds today. I often park on lower Rutledge when I march about town and carrying a camera makes me try to see the same sights in a fresh way. The red brick building was the former Baker Sanitarium and is now fashionable condos. 

Clothes washed, walking done, a few chores taken care of. I may have time to squeeze in a nap.

Remember that as Charleston Restaurant ends, Avondale Restaurant week begins. These are the restaurants that will be participating from September 19 - 25. Where shall we go? What shall we eat?

• Al Di La

• Avondale Wine & Cheese Bar

• Mellow Mushroom

• Mex 1 Coastal Cantina

• Pearlz Little Oyster Bar

• Triangle Char & Bar

It's Oleander time!

Oleanders at Colonial Lake, Charleston, S.C.

The Oleanders are in bloom at Colonial Lake making a nice frame for the Baker House. When I recently featured old pictures of the downtown hospitals someone asked about the old Baker Hospital. This is it. It is now ritzy condos.

Baker House:  The Baker House was constructed in 1912 as the Baker-Craig Sanitarium. This sixty-bed hospital and nursing school was founded by Dr. Archibald E. Baker Sr. and Dr. Lawrence Craig. The Baker House was designed by John D. Newcomer and Ernest V. Richards, prominent architects of the period. The building is a rare example of early 20th-century Eclectic architecture in Charleston, with Mission Revival and Craftsman design features. The Baker Hospital relocated in 1981, and in 1983 the building was rehabilitated for residential use. The building is protected under a conservation easement by the Preservation Society.

I hope everyone is having a good weekend. I am trying to spruce up my yard and stopped at Lowes to load up my little car with greenery, blossoms and edging stones. I've been spending so much at Lowes I might as well arrange to have my paycheck directly deposited there. On the way home I stopped at the new Black Bean Company restaurant on Savannah Highway. Yum! They have a full dinner menu now and had live music playing. It was a healthy, tasty oasis in the KMart parking lot.

Going, going, gone!

North Charleston, S.C.

This pile of rubble was Baker Hospital, although not the original Baker Hospital building which is now condos on Colonial Lake.

Baker Hospital became Roper Hospital North. After the hospital closed in 2001, the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce moved in but now the sweet spot on the water is going, going, gone. Soon no one will even remember there was a friendly community hospital there, but all over Charleston is a group of people that still greet each other and say, "Hey, didn't you used to work at Old Baker?"