Category: Notable Buildings

Notable Buildings

Eventual Edifice

The first Catholic cathedral in the South was begun in #Charleston in 1850, with a brownstone, Gothic Revival design by Irish-born architect Patrick Keely of Brooklyn, New York. The church was finished an consecrated in 1854 as the Cathedral of St. John an St. Finbar, but was destroyed seven years later in a great fire that swept the city in 1861. Keely was called on again to design a replacement structure on the same site, but it was nearly 30 years later. Charleston’s fortunes were decimated by the Civil War, the the Catholic diocese had barely enough money to build at all, and the replacement church, named the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist was constructed piece-meal over 17 years and after Keely’s death in 1896. Consecrated in 1907, the cathedral opened unfinished, lacking a steeple that  cost too much, and for more than a century, it was a flat-topped structure until the current steeple was finally completed in 2010. We go past the church on my tour on most days, and I point out that my parents were married in the structure. <img.src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”Cathedral of St. John the Baptist”

Distinctive Doors

At the corner of Broad and East Bay streets in #Charleston #SC, the details of the scenic 1853 building are exquisite and eye-catching. The building was created as a bank by the same man that many believe Margaret Mitchell fashioned her character of Rhett Butler in “Gone With The Wind”, whose real name was George Alfred Trenholm. Trenholm’s building was in use as a bank well into the 21st century, when it was at last converted into a restaurant and condominiums. But the classic details still adorn the old bank and provide a glimpse of what customers saw when entering more than 150 years ago. <img.src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”Number One Broad Street”

Fortunate Faber

The 1836 Palladian villa built by Henry Faber on East Bay Street in #historic #Charleston was one of several grand mansions built in the heyday of the city’s antebellum fortunes and classic architecture. The line of elegant buildings faced the Cooper River from a section of rising land known as Hampstead Hill. The higher elevation and the proximity to the river gave owners a spectacular view and cooling breezes. One of the first railroads built in the city ran down the waterfront in front of the houses, making them in the line of fire during the #Civil War, and the area were largely abandoned by owners who fled the conflict. After the war, the area was mostly inhabited by former slaves, or freedmen, and by the early 20th century, the Faber House had been transformed into one of the few black-owned hotels in Charleston, the Hamitic Hotel. After the depression, the hotel closed and many of the former houses were razed for housing projects. A flurry of preservationism saved the Faber House in 1948, and today it has been beautifully restored as a combination of residential and office spaces. <img.src=”Charleston Historic Sites” alt=”Faber House”

Misplaced Markers

Many of the #historic grave stones in the burial ground of the First Baptist Church in #CharlestonSC are leaning up against the north wall of the property – and there’s an interesting reason why. The lot was purchased in 1696 by a group that moved to the city from Kittery, Maine. At that time, Maine was part of the Massachusetts colony, and the group from Kittery were being persecuted by the Massachusetts Puritans for religious beliefs that ran counter to those accepted in the colony. The people in the group called themselves Antipedobaptists, believing that infants did not have the capability to choose to be baptized and that baptism  into Christianity had to be a conscious adult choice. The Puritans reacted harshly, so the group moved to Carolina, as the colony was then called, which offered  freedom from persecution for all beliefs at part of its colonial constitution. The group built a small wooden meeting house on a lot they bought on #Church Street, which was surrounded by a small graveyard. As the years progressed, the group changed its name to Anabaptists and then Baptists, and grew in numbers. Eventually the old structure was replaced with a church in the 1740’s, and the current church on the site added in 1822. Because the newer building required a much larger footprint on the small lot, the church was built on old grave sites, and the stones moved to the wall to remember this buried beneath. <img.src=”Charleston Historic Sites” alt=”First Baptist Church”

Peculiar Panes

The window panes in several of old #Charleston’s most #historic buildings feature an odd look that seems as though someone shot them with a BB gun. In fact, what this curious circles in the glass represent are the skills of the artisans who made these panes by hand. Before the industrial revolution made glass-making a mechanized procedure, window were typically made of what became known as Crown glass. The term comes from the molten glass that was created in kilns with a raised edge, or crown. The still-molten glass was attached as it cooled to a long pole, or pontil, and spun so that the centrifugal force would spread it into plates that were made into window panes. The attached section, was called the bullseye because of the large ripples created by the spinning, and was often cut out and thrown away. But it became fashionable to add the bullseye as one of the panes to show the skill of the artisan who made the glass. <img.src=”Charleston Curiosities” alt=”Bullseye window pane”

Mother Mary

The 1839 Greek Revival style Church of St. Mary of the Anunciation on Hasell Street is my family’s church and my great-great-great grandfather, Auguste Paul Trouche, is buried in the churchyard. The congregation was the first official Roman Catholic church in the South, incorporated in 1791. The original wooden structure on the location was replaced by a brick church in 1806, which burned in 1838, and a year later the current structure was opened. Contrary to what is commonly told on tours in #Charleston today, Catholicism was not banned in colonial South Carolina, as paragraph 97 of the 1669 Fundamental Constitution of Carolina cleared states that all beliefs were tolerated. Catholics were banned from holding public office until after the Revolution, but there were Catholics in Charleston long before that – but there was no acting priest or diocese until after the Revolution. Originally part of the Diocese of Baltimore, the Diocese of Charleston was created in 1820. Interestingly, the church is directly across Hasell Street from another congregation that was shunned in the early days of the colony as well, but still had practicing believers – Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim,  the oldest Jewish synagogue in continuous use in America. <img.src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”St. Mary’s Church”

 

Ponderous Pulpit

The 18th century pulpit inside #St. Michael’s Church in #Charleston has a singular look and history. The structure was hand-carved from mahogany and features the interesting “Christograph” panel with the IHS, Iota Eta Sigma, the Greek abbreviation of Jesus, as well as the symbol of Star of David inside a triangle. This is symbolic of Old Testament, Star of David, and New Testament, Holy Trinity. The pulpit also features its massive sounding board, or tympanum, that is brilliantly created to balance on two rear wooden columns. The pulpit has survived more than the wrath of the Almighty, having been scarred by a Federal artillery shell fired into the church by Union troops bombarding the city in 1865. <img.src=”Classic Architecture” alt=”St. Michael’s Church pulpit”

Unconventional Unitarians

The Unitarian Church on Archdale Street in historic #Charleston is the 3rd oldest in the city, completed in 1787 and remodeled in the 1850’s by noted Charleston architect Francis Lee, incorporating English Renaissance and Gothic Revival styles. The Unitarians were always considered to be unconventional, and one of their intrinsic beliefs is that the son of God was not as divine as God himself, and therefore were not considered by some to be Christians. The Unitarians were very progressive in many respects, and were sympathetic to abolition and to women’s rights. One of the famous legends of the church graveyard is that the congregation was the only one in Charleston willing to accept the body of the notorious Lavinia Fisher, hanged for highway robbery in 1822, and whose body lies here in an unmarked grave. This area on Archduke Street is one of the city’s most scenic, including the Garden Walk. <img.src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”Unitarian Church”

Gothic Grandeur

The interior of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, circa 1862, is one of the most dramatic displays in #historicCharlestonSC. It was designed by architect Francis D. Lee, who was an incredibly talented Charleston native. Lee, who became a Confederate office in the defense of Charleston during the #CivilWar, was so creative that he designed a torpedo boat, The Torch, planned for use against the Federal blockading squadron that tried to cut the maritime supply lines to the South. Lee’s various building designs included Moorish Revival, Italianate and Gothic Revival, and all of the work he did that still exists is very eye-catching today. <img.src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”St. Luke’s Episcopal Church”

Curious Cupola

The John Ashe Alston House on #South Battery Street was completed shortly after the Revolutionary War and features a design that was very much in style at the time, including the distinctive cupola on the top. Cupola means “dome” in Italian, and was a detail originating from the Roman and Greek styles and made popular by Andreas Palladio in his “Four Books of Architecture” published in the 16th century, which influenced American builders and architects for many years. The idea of this centrally-located feature was both aesthetic and functional, gracing the looks of the building and allowing hot air to be released from within. This particular cupola also has a legend that it was used as a navigation light in the days when it faced South Bay, which was filled by the 1840’s to create White Point Garden.  <img src=”Charleston Architecture” alt=”John Ashe Alston House ”>