Rainbow Row merchant houses began as waterfront shops

These houses were built starting around 1740 to serve the merchant trade. Each structure functioned as a shop on the street level with the merchant and family living in the floors above. Ships docked at the end of the road, as the water once reached this exact line before the ground to the east was created as fill. Every side street along this stretch retains the word wharf in its name, marking the former edge of the harbor.

By the early twentieth century, the block had fallen into disrepair and faced the threat of demolition. In 1931, Dorothy Haskell Porcher Legge purchased the houses at 99 and 101 East Bay Street and repainted them using a scheme inspired by colonial Caribbean architecture. She chose these shades of pink and soft peach specifically to draw attention to the buildings, arguing that the block was worth saving rather than tearing down. Her neighbors soon followed her lead, and the name Rainbow Row became common usage by the 1950s.

The bright paint served as a practical argument for preservation during a critical year for the city. On 19 October 1931, the Charleston City Council passed the first historic district zoning law in the United States. This ordinance created a Board of Architectural Review with the authority to approve or refuse alterations to buildings within a designated 138-acre Old and Historic District. Susan Pringle Frost led this effort, having founded the Society for the Preservation of Old Dwellings in 1920.

Because no other American city had enacted such a law, Charleston became the model for others to follow. The paint on these walls and the new zoning ordinance were both strategies to protect a neighborhood that others had dismissed as run-down. While the original 1931 district covered a specific area of the city, that protected zone has since expanded to include more than 4,800 buildings.