Rainbow on a gloomy day

Rainbow Row, Charleston, S.C.

There are so many trees on this stretch of East Bay St. that it is hard to get a good picture of the row of houses that make up Rainbow Row. It is a little easier during the winter with some of the trees bare. Check out all these google images: Rainbow Row.

Rainbow Row: After the Civil War, this area of Charleston devolved into near slum conditions. In the early 1900s, Dorothy Porcher Legge purchased a section of these houses numbering 99 through 101 East Bay and began to renovate them. She chose to paint these houses pink based on a colonial Caribbean color scheme. Other owners and future owners followed suit, creating the "rainbow" of pastel colors present today. The coloring of the houses helped keep the houses cool inside as well as give the area its name.

Common myths concerning Charleston include variants on the reasons for the paint colors. According to some tales, the houses were painted in the various colors such that the intoxicated sailors coming in from port could remember which houses they were to bunk in.

 This vintage car happened to come by at just the right time!