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Eh. probably a tossup between Savannah GA and Charleston SC.
Pretty much, SC probably has a slight edge. Beaufort is also historic, albeit small. There’s not as much else historic in Georgia, though there’s some history to places like Jekyll Island.
Pretty much, SC probably has a slight edge. Beaufort is also historic, albeit small. There’s not as much else historic in Georgia, though there’s some history to places like Jekyll Island.
South Carolina: Charleston of course is a great small historic city - the largest in this whole region. There's also a bit of historic fabric left in Beaufort. You might even make an argument for Georgetown, but I think it's the more typical southern "historic" city (a few blocks of commercial, surrounded by some late 19th/early 20th century frame homes.
Georgia: Savannah is great (I think it's better architecturally than Charleston, albeit quite a bit smaller), but Georgia doesn't have that much coast, and Brunswick (the only other contender) is much, much smaller, developed later (more of a late 19th/early 20th century city, not a colonial one) and isn't well preserved.
Florida: Has St. Augustine and Key West. That's about it. The actual old section of St. Augustine is quite tiny as well (the city had 4,200 in 1900, while Key West had 17,100 at the time.
North Carolina: The state was much less of a "city" area and more of yeoman farmer state in the colonial era, and the coastal plain never had a large population compared to the Piedmont. Wilmington is the only coastal-ish city which is even medium sized, and although it has a decently-intact downtown and a nice historic district to the south of it, much of the city isn't in great shape. The other coastal cities (Elizabeth City, Washington, New Bern, etc.) are tiny and maybe have a few blocks of surviving 19th century storefronts.
It's important to note that even in Charleston/Savannah, the historic areas are quite small. Maybe 20,000 people live in the core urban portions of Charleston (peninsula below the highway) and about 10,000 people live in the core of Savannah (only around 3,000 in the rowhouse section).
You can even add Mt Pleasant across the Cooper River from Charleston...while most of it is newer suburban, it's old village area has some historical charm to it as well...
SC wins this battle.
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