Historic Charleston Foundation launches tour app

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Historic Charleston Foundation has launched an app to provide visitors with self-guided tours of the Aiken-Rhett House and the Nathaniel Russell House.

Each tour lasts about 45 minutes. The app also includes additional information for people interested in learning more details of each house museum, its collections, and the people who lived and labored at the site.

“For some time, we’ve been working on an initiative to tell everyone’s history, and we believe the new app helps to advance that initiative,” foundation President and CEO Winslow Hastie said in a news release. “Our house museum narratives have evolved into a more complete story of not only the families who owned the properties, but also the stories of the enslaved who lived and labored there.”

In addition to the house tours, the app includes a city guide that tells the story of Charleston through the lens of preservation, with over 300 text stops and 30 audio stops throughout the peninsula.

The app includes stories of Charleston’s more recent history, such as the 2015 shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, as well its African-American, women’s, immigrant and working-class histories.

“As a citywide preservation organization, we realized that we had a unique opportunity to interpret these overlooked and forgotten narratives through the Historic Charleston Foundation app, and thus to help shape the narrative of our city moving forward,” said Lauren Northup, director of museums for Historic Charleston Foundation.