Looking Up Cumberland Street

Cumberland Street runs east-west a block north of Queen. In April 1865 it looked like this, a bit cluttered by a heap of stone in the street, a wagon, a carriage, two-wheel carts and a big wooden barrel. Centerpiece of this photograph is Archibald McLeish’s Vulcan Iron Works. Its elaborate signage, projecting two dozen feet over Cumberland, evidenced the products that McLeish could manufacture: an iron wheel, an anchor, a plow, an anvil, double-action locomotive spring, even a brass cannon. There are two horses tethered on the north side of the street, possibly belonging to a couple of the men on McLeish’s second-floor porch who are looking down at the photographer.

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.