Rainbow Row

Thirteen pastel-coloured Georgian houses on East Bay Street, built between 1740 and 1820 as merchant warehouses opening onto the old wharves of Charleston Harbour. The houses are painted in shades of pink, peach, yellow, and mint — the most photographed streetscape in Charleston and one of the most recognisable in the American South.

Rainbow Row runs along East Bay Street between Tradd Street and Elliott Street, a short walk from the Battery. The houses are private residences, so there's no interior access, but the facade gives a vivid picture of colonial Charleston's mercantile character. Walk along the street in the morning for the best light, or in the afternoon when the shadows lengthen and the colours warm up. The adjacent cobblestone lanes and wrought-iron gates of the surrounding streets are worth exploring on foot.

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A story
Rainbow Row's candy-coloured facades are a 20th-century invention. The houses, built in the 1740s as merchant warehouses with living quarters above, were painted in pastel shades in the 1930s by Susan Pringle Frost, an early preservation activist, who had bought several of the dilapidated buildings and used the bright colours to make them appealing to buyers. Before the 1930s they were unpainted brick. The colours became so popular that neighbours followed suit — and now tourists follow them.