Looking Toward the Cooper River

In March 1865, a photographer standing in the cupola of the Orphan Asylum aimed his camera westward to take in this part of Charleston’s West End. The white building at right center was Aimar’s Drug Store on King Street. Established in 1852, it ceased doing business in 1978. Included in this view, at King and Ann Streets, is the Charleston Post Office, relocated from East Bay Street on August 26, 1863, to get out of range of Gillmore’s bombardment. Just a few weeks later, the post office moved again, this time another half-mile to the northwest. Augustine Smythe wrote his sister Susan on September 2: “You see by the papers that the Post Office has been moved, & far enough this time, up to the corner of Ashley & Cannon Sts. The shells were falling too closely around the old stand, & the Office could not bear the pressure.” Today in the upper right, one would see the Arthur Ravenel Jr. bridge to Mount Pleasant.

This is the caption as printed in 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War. It has not yet been through this site’s research and fact-checking pass.