Category: Architecture

Architecture

Rodgers’ Rouge

The towering mansion that Francis Rodgers built in the 1880’s features bricks that were highlighted by iron oxides in the kiln process to give them a distinctive hue, and highlighted by stone quoins and a Mansard roof, this 14,000 square foot structure is hard to miss. Rodgers was a very successful businessman and councilman in #Charleston after the Civil War, and was dedicated to creating the first public fire department, which he helped organize in 1881. The architect who designed the house, Daniel Wayne, would also design the three first public fire houses in the city. Today the Rodgers Mansion is a hotel called the Wentworth Mansion, from the name of the street if faces, but the structure should be called for the person who created its fire-red bricks and Charleston’s firehouses, Francis Rodgers. <img src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”Rodgers Mansion”>

Revolution Remembrances

The John Stuart House on Tradd Street is one of the most storied houses in #Historic Charleston. Built in the 1760’s by Stuart, a Scottish immigrant who played a huge role in resolving conflicts with native Cherokees and whose house features a combination of historic wooden siding – beaded weatherboard on the sides and rear as well as shiplap on the front. But the most famous story involving the house occurred in the Spring of 1780, during the Revolution, when British forces were besieging Charleston. According to this legendary tale, officers of the 2nd South Carolina regiment defending the city met in the house to discuss strategy, finishing the meeting with heavy drinking, when one officer Francis Marion, a Calvinist who did not drink alcohol, refused to participate and when reverted from leaving, leapt from a window to escape, breaking his ankle. Retiring to his rural plantation to recuperate, Marion also escaped capture when the British took the city in May, 1780. He would recover and lead forces against the British from the swamps of coastal South Carolina, and famously became known as the “Swamp Fox”, eventually helping drive the English from South Carolina.<img src=”famous houses” alt=”Swamp Fox”>

Confederate Home and College

The Confederate Home and College was created in 1867 by Amarinthia and Isabella Snowden as a home for widows, mothers and daughters of Confederate soldiers killed during the Civil War, and as a college for women, who had little advanced educational opportunities in that era. The building is a circa 1800 dwelling that became a local bank, and was abandoned after the Civil war, and was a purchased with money the sisters raised by mortgaging their houses. Damaged by an earthquake in 1886, the building was restored with its distinctive Mansard roof and finial-topped dormer windows. Today the organization still provides housing for indigent widows as well as providing five college scholarships for women.

Pineapple Fountain

The mesmerizing Pineapple Fountain at the newly-renamed #RileyWaterfrontPark is symbolic of hospitality based on an image shown in an earlier blog of Charleston’s namesake, King Charles II, accepting this healthful fruit from the new world from his royal gardener, and has since become a standard on Charleston gate posts, showing that we welcome those who come to our city.<img src=”Pineapple Fountain” alt=”Charleston Parks”>

Landmarks Charleston

The towering 182-foot spire of the Circular Congregational Church is shown in this pre-Civil War photograph. The church,  designed by famed Charleston architect Robert Mills, was a domed structure when finished in 1804, and the steeple was eventually added in the 1830’s. It was the second largest domed structure in America behind the US Capitol, and a marvel of engineering with a truss-supported roof. The church stood majestically next to South Carolina Institute Hall to its right in the picture. Institute Hall, designed by Charleston architects Edward Jones and Francis Lee, and was the largest public hall in the state when finished in 1854 where South Carolina delegates were the first to sign articles of Secession breaking from the Union in December 1860. A year later, both would be in ashes after a devastating fire swept through the city in 1861. Despite such irreparable losses in historic architecture, Charleston still displays the most compelling contiguous area of colonial and antebellum architecture in America.<img src=”Circular Congregational Church” alt=”Charleston Architecture”>

Charleston Skyline

The People’s Bank Building, completed in 1911, was part of the effort by Charleston Mayor Robert Goodwyn Rhett to bring the old city into a new modern century with its first high-rise office building. The 8-story, 121-foot edifice, which is now simply called The People’s Building,  was distinguished by its yellow Stoney Landing Brick and an overhanging cornice that was damaged by hurricane in 1938 and removed. But despite Rhett’s intentions, the modern building was considered an eyesore, and was one of the reasons this part of the city has height restrictions today. Charleston is divided into height zones, and this part of the city is designated 55/30, meaning nothing can be built higher than 55 feet and nothing lower than 30 feet to prevent such changes to the historic skyline. <img src=”People’s Building” alt=”Charleston Architecture”>

Historic Charleston Hall

What opened in 1801 at a Bank of the Unites States, became Charleston’s City Hall in 1818, and in the main second story entrance hall there are still barred teller’s windows. Inscribed in the marble floor is the city seal, which includes the Latin “Civitatis Regimine Donata” meaning Given to the City Government. There are paintings of the building done before the Civil War showing that a fire-red brick facade that was eventually stuccoed over for the ivory look it has today. Among the famous figures who spoke from its front steps were U.S. President James Monroe, the Marquis de Lafayette and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Tourists see the famous building on each my tours. <img src=”City Hall Charleston” alt=”Historic Buildings”>

Clay Crown

A still common sight in old #Charleston is the clay tile roof, which has been in vogue since the origins of the city in the 17th century. Clay is abundant in the Charleston area, and easily fashioned into bricks or tiles by baking in kilns. Clay is made up of natural compounds silica and alumina, as well as various amounts of water. The clay in Charleston’s coast plain is well-saturated with water, which gives the clay a very low thermal conductivity. With clay tiles, the double advantage is that heat does not pass through as easily, keeping houses cooler from scorching Summer sun outside, and in the Winter, retaining heat inside. The raised edges and depressed interior of the tiles, called cap and pan style, also serves to facilitate air flow in the cap and water run-off down the pan. This is the #PinkHouseTavern in the #French Quarter, and the style of the double-hipped roof is actually a Dutch Gambrel. <img src=”Clay Tile Roof” alt=”Pink House Tavern”>

Spiral Stair Mystery

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Some nice folks on my tour told me about the Loretto Chapel in Sante Fe that is built in the similar cantilevered style of the famous staircase at the #Nathaniel Russell House at 51 Meeting Street. The Loretto chapel was built in 1878, after Catholic nuns asked for help in building a passageway from their chapel to a choir area 22 feet above. They apparently prayed for help to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, and had their prayer answered by an anonymous builder, who fashioned the magnificent staircase to spiral upward in elliptical shape without any supporting wall.

How interesting that the 3-story staircase at the Russell house also rises three flights up without any support or the use of a single nail in its construction, and the carpenter who created it is also unknown. Even more intriguing is that the Russell house also became home to nuns in 1870, when the Sisters of Charity of Our lady of Mercy moved in and turned the house into a convent academy for young girls Today the house is a museum run by the Historic Charleston Foundation, and visitors can marvel at the structural elegance of this imposing stair.<img src=”Russell House” alt=”Historic Charleston”>