Charleston Living Magazine May-June 2023

Broad Street Success
Charleston’s storied street continues to reinvent itself
Article and photos by JENNY PETERSON
One of the most historic streets in Charleston, Broad Street crosses the southern
tip of the Charleston peninsula from the Ashley River to its terminus at the Exchange Building,
comprising a stretch of tight buildings concentrated between King and East Bay Streets.
Historically, merchants operated on the ground floor with apartments above.
“(Broad Street) has been used for parades,
public gatherings and state funerals. It has
been the scene of riots, duels and various
crimes. Broad Street has served as the heartbeat
of historic Charleston since the city’s
start on the peninsula in 1670s,” write authors
Margaret Middleton Rivers Eastman
and Robert P. Stockton in the book Broad
Street and Beyond: Charleston’s Historic Nexus
of Power. The street even had rudimentary
streetcars in the late 1800s.
Broad Street has seen many iterations—
buildings served as boarding houses, drugstores
and even horse stables in the 1700s
and 1800s—with its modern reputation as a
haven for law offices just steps from the federal
and county courthouses on the corner of
Meeting and Broad Streets.
In the year 1890, a few blocks of Broad
Street “sheltered 95 percent of Charleston’s
attorney’s offices,” according to Eastman and
Stockton.
Today, while attorney offices and similar
court-related businesses still enjoy Broad
Street addresses, over the past year, the street
has welcomed more lifestyles businesses,
turning over a new leaf as a shopping and
dining corridor.
Two fine-dining restaurants have opened
on Broad Street in the past year—Sorelle, an
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