Here’s the CliffsNotes version of Joseph P. Riley Jr.’s new memoir, Windows on Washington Square (Evening Post Books, January 2025): basically everything we enjoy and love about Charleston today stems from bold decisions made by the former mayor during his 40 years of visionary leadership. Taking a stroll along Waterfront Park where kids splash in the fountains and couples snuggle on park benches. Meandering along King Street, where locals and visitors shop, eat, and explore. Enjoying enhanced public parks, revitalized neighborhoods, stronger public schools, vibrant arts and culture, Spoleto. You name it, and Riley’s fingerprints are on it. If the memoir’s 17 chapters were a musical album, it’d be dubbed Riley’s Greatest Hits. If it were a Marvel flick, we’d title it Masters of the Public Realm. Most fittingly, I call it a primer on how holding public office can be an act of public service, not of amassing (and abusing) power.
Not that Charleston’s 60th mayor, who held the office for four decades, didn’t wield power. He understood that City Hall operated under a “strong mayor” structure and used his strength with confidence. Though he had his detractors, Riley based decisions on what he believed served the greater good—uplifting minorities, especially Charleston’s African American citizens, and championing the public realm for the benefit of the little guy/gal. “I’m talking about working confidently to move the city forward to achieve something in the best interest of all. A mayor who focuses on the aspirations, goodness, and optimism of the citizens is a builder of a forward-thinking, happy, and beautiful city,” he writes.
In a chapter devoted to affordable housing—an issue as confounding in the 1980s as today—Riley describes his desire to shift from “housing projects” toward smaller, attractive, affordable housing throughout the city, designed to blend into existing neighborhoods. “Imagine what we can do: A child who lives in one of the houses would walk out the front door and be surrounded by good people—the owner of a business across the street or the medical student who lives next door, the teachers, homemakers, coaches, ministers, and lots of friends. The child would be among people who cared about their neighbors with beams of affection and support. That’s what we are going to do!” Lofty? Yes. Feasible? Yes, when matched by Riley’s perseverance and skillful political machination. And that’s Riley’s hallmark: decisions driven not by greed or bottom line, but by dreams of a culture of care, a vision fueled by “beams of affection and support.”…