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Jane Thornhill thrives on showing tourists the city she loves
By Dennis Quick
Jane Thornhill thrives on showing tourists the city she
loves
Associate
Editor
Jane Thornhill started showing
Charleston to tourists in 1954. Back then there were few tour buses on hand.
And horse-drawn carriages? Forget about it. Thornhill drove a private car, and
for $3 an hour tourists of what was then a quiet, sleepy Holy City got an
eyeful of architectural beauty and an earful of history.
“Liz Young was the first female
registered guide in 1952,” recalls Thornhill, a native Charlestonian whose
mother showed tourists the city in the 1920s. “It was Liz who convinced me to
become a tour guide. So I took a course — you have to take one every three
years — issued by the Historical Commission of the City of Charleston and I
passed it. In those days you had to pass the exam with a grade of at least 90
out of 100. Today I think the minimum passing grade is 75.”
Thornhill remained an independent tour
guide until 1970. Then she conducted tours for the Charleston Guide Service
until that organization folded in 1985. Afterward she returned to independent
work, showing Charleston’s sights to everyone from casual out-of-towners to
front-page celebrities like Laura Bush, wife of Republican presidential
candidate and Texas Gov. George W. Bush, as well as Jane Pauley and her
husband, Doonesbury cartoonist Gary
Trudeau.
Thornhill is something of a celebrity
herself, having appeared on ABC-TV’s “Good
Morning America,” in The New York Times and Town & Country.
One of the last of the city’s independent
tour guides, Thornhill is semi-retired these days, giving tours “when I feel
like it.” She drives a van seating six tourists and charges $45 per couple. But
her favorite destinations are as exciting to her now as when she began in the
business.
“I like to take visitors to the Walled
City,” says Thornhill, referring to the area of the peninsula encompassed by
Cumberland, East Bay, Water and Meeting streets. “Charleston is one of three
walled cities in America,” she explains, “and you can still see part of the
wall in the basement of the Exchange Building on East Bay — one of the most
famous buildings in the United States. George Washington gave a speech there.”
Another favorite spot is the Battery,
which Thornhill claims is the most popular tourist sight in Charleston. It was
there that Thornhill, in her earlier years, conducted house tours — what she
calls the best way to teach visitors about the city.
In addition to her favorite
destinations, Thornhill takes tourists “anywhere they want to go,” including
some private gardens to which no other tour guide has access. Another popular destination is Thornhill’s
own Legare Street home, a converted stable filled with 19th and
early 20th-century portraits of Thornhill family ancestors.
Thornhill is continuously amazed at how much Charleston has grown.
“It used to be everybody knew everybody else,” she claims. “When I graduated
from the College of Charleston in 1946, there were 35 of us in our class and we
were all from Charleston. This past May there were something like 1,100
graduates from all over the world.”
When Thornhill started in the tour
business the season lasted only six weeks — from March 15 to May 1. “Because of
the weather,” she explains. “Those
weeks in spring were the most comfortable. The summer was too hot, and there
wasn’t much air conditioning. Air conditioning is the greatest invention of the
century. Because of it, the tourist season lasts year-round.”
Thornhill claims tourism put
Charleston on the map and notes a difference between today’s tourists and those
in the past. “People are more enthusiastic about Charleston now than they were
back then. They’re more educated, they’ve read about the city and look forward
to seeing it.”
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