Treat your significant other, family, friends or business associates to TRUE Waterfront Dining. A top-notch dining experience aboard SpiritLine Cruises' Spirit of Carolina Dinner Cruise will create lasting memories.

Today we visit the Blake-Grimke House at 321 East Bay.  Currently a law office, this house retains the spirit of illustrious inhabitants.Today we visit the Blake-Grimke House at 321 East Bay.  Currently a law office, this house retains the spirit of illustrious inhabitants.

Before 1789, William Blake, a planter who owned land in both South Carolina and England, built this impressive house on the edge of Ansonborough...

Welcome aboard! Comfortable seating awaits you. Gray Line buses are clean with large, clear windows. You will have great views of the architectural gem that is Historic Charleston, South Carolina. Navigating Charleston's famous streets and alleyways, Gray Line's 20 to 25-passenger mini-buses are designed to access downtown's narrow traverses. And, Gray Line has added 5 brand NEW climate-controlled buses for 2018!

The Chazal family purchased the land at 66 Anson Street in 1823 for $1.00. Walking by this property today, I believe we would all agree that the Chazals got a great deal! Of course, the house still had to be built and was finally constructed in 1839. Perhaps the family felt it was a good time to build with all the surrounding construction after the fire of 1838.

This is where it all began -- the site of the opening battle of the deadliest war in all American history. The estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and sailors who perished make it deadlier than ALL other American conflicts COMBINED. Thirty per cent of all men of South Carolina who served from 1861-1865 did not survive.

It should come as no surprise as a visitor in Charleston (any more than in Honolulu and Pearl Harbor) when someone speaks about "the war" ...

Fort Sumter has been voted by Conde Nast Readers Choice Awards as a #1 Top US Destination. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Fort Sumter is located at the entrance of historic Charleston, South Carolina's harbor and celebrated its 150th Anniversary in April 2015. Best known as the site upon which the shots that started the American Civil War were fired, a visit to Fort Sumter is an authentic piece of American history.

72 Anson Street dates from 1846, replacing the first house on this lot, which was destroyed by the 1838 fire that burnt much of Ansonborough. If you drive down Anson Street today, 72 Anson is the single house with the red door. Instead of a front door view, I chose to use my recent photograph that shows the side of the house with its white piazza peeking through the white blooms of a magnificent dogwood in the expansive garden. Spring is here!

Views, unsurpassed! Cruise through Charleston harbor as the sun begins to set with an explosion of color. Photo Ops are pletiful with the twin-spanned Ravenel Bridge as backdrop. Patriots Point and the USS Yorktown on the port side of your Fort Sumter Tour boat and historic Charleston's Rainbow Row, High Battery and architectural rooftops to starboard as you cruise through Charleston's famous harbor.

Laurens Street ends in front of 75 Anson Street. This house was built around 1800 by Joseph Legare, whose father owned the property next door at 79 Anson Street.

Legare, pronounced "Luh-gree," is an old Charleston name. It is my understanding that the first Legare immigrated here in the late 17th century. While the Legare ancestry is French and is associated with the Huguenots escaping persecution in France, the early Legares seem to have been members, not of the Huguenot Church on Queen Street, but of the Circular Congregational Church on Meeting Street. Both Joseph Legare and his father, Daniel Legare, are buried there.

Still wandering around Ansonborough, this week we explore 57 Laurens Street, built around 1836 in the Greek Revival style. Two years after this house was built, the fire of 1838 wiped out most of the Ansonborough houses; fortunately, 57 Laurens and several of the homes around it escaped the blaze.