Big Red

Porcher-Simonds House, East Battery, Charleston, SC  © Doug Hickok


One of Charleston's most popular sights is the row antebellum mansions that perch above East Battery Street, overlooking Charleston harbor. Many of these houses display tall multi-story columns that are visible from several miles away.

The Porcher-Simonds House (1856), pictured above, was designed in an architectural style reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance, complete with Ionic capitals and an ornately decorated pediment.

The red palmetto tree flag, called "Big Red", is a variant of the blue South Carolina state flag. It was flown by Charlestonians, just after the Declaration of Succession of 1860, as a symbol of state's rights and resistance to encroachments of the federal government.