Charleston Museum

The Charleston Museum is a history and natural history museum located in Charleston, South Carolina, and is widely cited as America’s first museum, founded in 1773. It interprets the history, culture and natural environment of Charleston and the Lowcountry.

Exhibition highlights include displays of natural history specimens, decorative arts, material culture and archaeology that document the region’s colonial, antebellum and postbellum periods. The museum operates both the main exhibition building and several affiliated historic house museums.

The museum was established in the colonial period and has collected objects and built exhibits over more than two centuries to document Charleston’s urban and regional history. It also preserves and interprets several historic properties as house museums.

The Charleston Museum is located on Meeting Street in downtown Charleston, within the city’s historic district and close to other historic sites and cultural institutions.

• Founding: Founded in 1773, it is widely regarded and promoted as the oldest museum in the United States still in operation.

What to See #

• Main Museum: The main museum building on Meeting Street houses permanent collections covering natural history, decorative arts and local history exhibits about Charleston and the surrounding region.
• Joseph Manigault House: A historic house museum on Philip Street displaying Federal and antebellum-era furnishings and architecture dating to the early 19th century.
• Heyward-Washington House: A colonial-era house museum dating to the 1770s that interprets life in Charleston around the American Revolutionary period.