St. Michael's, After

St. Michael's at Meeting and Broad — the portico, the arched windows, and the steeple going up out of the top of the frame, with a cart wheel leaning at the left and a broken building at the right edge.

The cornerstone was laid in February 1752 and the church opened for services in 1761, and because fire took the first St. Philip's in 1835, this is the oldest church building standing in Charleston — the building in the photograph, not a replacement of it. Its steeple, the first landmark a ship's master picked up coming over the bar, was painted black during the war on the theory that it would spoil the Federal gunners' aim; it had been painted black once before, during the British siege of 1780.

A mounted print rather than a glass negative, to judge by its surface and edges, and a quieter kind of record: the church came through the bombardment still standing, in a district that did not.