Charleston Living Magazine May-June 2023

Italian restaurant, bar, and market and French
restaurant La Banque, with a basement bar.
The Broad Street restaurants join newcomers
Souchi boutique, Magnolia Medi
Spa and Vignette Home Table Garden home
décor, among others.
One of the newest businesses announced
for Broad Street is a one-of-a-kind
venture: a remote broadcast studio where
elected officials and national pundits can do
live commentary and interviews on national
network TV.
Josh Nass, a crisis communications attorney,
purchased 61 Broad St., a four-story
office building, in early 2023. The existing law
firm will continue to rent the space and the
conference room will be transformed into the
studio once the firm vacates the space.
After moving to Charleston from New
York during the pandemic, Nass fell in love
with the city and the history and prominence
of Broad Street.
“I’ve always been a fan of Broad Street
and South of Broad and when the building
came on the market, I got to work quickly,”
Nass said. “Broad Street is one of Charleston’s
most charming, historic and architecturally
favorable and appealing blocks. I
want to give Broad Street the panache that
it deserves.”
Broad Street for all
Carriage horses pull tourists down the famous
stretch on Broad Street, with a stop at
the famed “Four Corners of Law” (see story
on page 24). Beyond that iconic intersection,
buildings on the dense ccommercial strip of
Broad Street have more humble stories that
belie their more than 350 years of history.
Historians note that Broad Street
throughout its early existence comprised of
varying social and economic groups living
and working together in the same block, typical
for European cities.
In the book, “Life on Broad Street: archaeological
survey of the Hollings Judicial
Center Annex,” which was published in 1996
and documented archaeological studies while
building the federal courthouse on Broad
Street, authors Michael Trinkley and Debi
Hacker studied and recounted Broad Street’s
plats in 1872 as a “densely-developed block”
with a police station at the corner of Broad
and Meeting Streets, horse stables nearby
and a makeshift street market.
“The renters during the nineteenth century
were neither very high status, nor very
low. They represent a diverse mix of young
and old, male and female. Some were students,
others were young, single clerks. Some
were widows. This middling status is perhaps
what is expected in a fringe neighborhood,”
authors wrote.
While grand banks popped up in ornate
Italian renaissance style, including the People’s
Bank at 18 Broad Street and the handsome
brownstone built at 1 Broad Street, on the
corner of East Bay in 1853 as the first Bank
of South Carolina, maps outlining the majority
of businesses in 1883 show more middleclass
digs: a business selling fruit at 89 Broad
Street, a kindergarten at 91 Broad Street and
a drugstore at 95 Broad Street.
The News and Courier published out
of 19 Broad Street from 1873 to 1902. The
(Opposite and below): Historic buildings along a
commerical stretch of Broad Street. Above: Horses
still pull carriages down Broad as tourists learn
about the historic street.
May/June 2023 | 59