I moved to Charleston in 2004 after many years in Los Angeles and New York, New York. I find Charleston fascinating. It has many things that I missed during my years in larger cities for instance more diverse wildlife and more accessible history.

Charleston, named after King Charles II, was founded as Charlestown or Charles Towne, Carolina in 1670. Many of my favorite buildings downtown were built about that time and are still standing pretty much as they were.

In 1690, Charleston was the fifth largest city in North America, and remained among the ten largest cities in the United States until the middle of the 19th century. Charleston is called The Holy City because of the many churches on the low-rise cityscape, and for its history of religious tolerance. It was one of the few cities in the original thirteen colonies to provide religious tolerance to the French Huguenot Church and to allow Jews to practice their faith without restriction.

Today Charleston is a fairly small city with a population a bit over 100,000 and 600,000 if you include the surrounding counties.

The city of Charleston is located at the junction of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. I have lived for the past five years in the show of the Cooper River bridges. I have taken hundreds of photos of the Cooper River Bridge (also known as the Ravenel Bridge) some of which are reproduced on these pages.

I get a big kick out of the fact that America's most-published etiquette expert, Young Stewart, has recognized the city since 1995 as the "best-mannered" city in the U.S. Although not a southerner by birth, I did graduate from the University of Virginia and have lived in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia for a major portion of my life. I find the manners to be a thin but pleasant veneer,