First Baptist Church
First Baptist Church • 61 Church Street
ROBERT MILLS, architect of First Baptist Church, described it as, “the best specimen of correct taste in architecture of the modern buildings in this city. It is purely Greek in its style, simply grand in its proportions, and beautiful in its detail.”
He was mistaken only in its being purely Greek in style, but what he meant was that it had the Greek Revival aesthetic, with a massive appearance created by few openings, minimal detailing, and flawless proportions. In fact, the style is largely Roman, but it was characteristic of architects of the American Greek Revival to use Roman forms with Greek details, as well as Greek forms with Roman details.
Arc de Triumphe “block” in Paris
The principal Roman features here are the triumphal arch block: the front piece of the church proper that the Roman Doric portico is attached to. This block has the form, the attic, and the triple arches of a Roman triumphal arch (top right), and Mills derived it indirectly from the intermediate block of the Pantheon (middle right)—and added two steps below it.
For his earlier Circular Church (designed in 1804 and burned in 1861), Mills had used the dome of the Pantheon as its principal feature, but for the First Baptist Church, he used the typical Protestant auditorium that is open except for a U-shaped balcony.
Model of Pantheon showing portico, block, and rotunda
Mills’ design shows how The Roman Doric order differs from the Tuscan order in having triglyphs (the motif that looks like a series of Roman Numeral IIIs above the columns) and a double-torus base (the double rings at the base of the columns).
Despite using these significant Roman features (including the characteristic arch), Mill made no attempt to design in one style. The attached portico is also based on the Pantheon, but it was popularized by the Italian architect, Palladio, and Mills owed as much to the Roman Doric porticoes of St. Philips (bottom right) as to Roman or Renaissance architecture.
Roman Doric poticoes of St. Philip’s Church
His pediment (the triangular area of the roof), though, is significantly lower and its moldings project farther than on St. Philips, and it is distinctively Greek, and the block hides a taller roof over the body of the building. The block initially had a central, glazed lantern to admit light into the vestibule.
Inside the church, the balcony is supported by Greek Doric columns (fluted and without a base), but with Renaissance (Scamozzi) columns whose angled volutes support the ceiling, as at St. Michael’s. Mills wrote that the interior was “finished in a rich chaste style, and producing, from the unity of the design, a very pleasing effect.” The focus of the church interior, its west end, was renovated in 1883 and later redesigned by Simons & Lapham.
Mills grew up in Charleston and greatly admired its architecture, and even after he studied with Benjamin Henry Latrobe—who introduced the restraint of the Greek Revival to the United States—he continued to incorporate any features he admired into tightly unified compositions. This was the way buildings had always been designed in the United States until enough architectural history became known to design in a single style.
Latrobe had used a similar bock and attached portico for his Baltimore Cathedral, and a Roman dome also, but what makes First Baptist Church a distinctively Greek Revival building is his reliance primarily on proportions, the minimal use of ornament, and the use of Greek orders. For First Baptist Church, Mills used triglyphs—which had been used on St. Michael’s—although he omitted triglyphs from the Greek Doric order on his later Fireproof Building (at the northwest corner of Washington Square), making it more Greek Revival than Greek or Renaissance.
Monticello
Mills probably borrowed the triple-arched opening within the portico directly from design for Monticello, which Jefferson redesigned and Mills drew for him.
Mills’ Baptist church represents the end of a way of designing and the beginning of a more scholarly approach to design. In a few decades buildings were being designed in Charleston that were wholly Gothic, Italianate, and even Moorish rather than based on a continuing design tradition.
This is also a distinctively Mills design for its massiveness, and he achieved his characteristic “massy” quality primarily by using compact forms, most often the cube and sphere. Mills’ use of the words proportion, beautiful, massy, unity, and chaste indicate what he strove to achieve.
While you’re outside, don’t forget to appreciate the simple yet elegant wrought-iron fence with its built-in lamp posts—a feature you rarely see in other wrought- or cast-iron fences and gates downtown.
First Baptist Church was completed 1819-1822, and Robert Mills would later be the architect of the Treasury Building and Washington Monument in the District of Columbia. •
(Learn more about architectural terms: See this helpful glossary.)
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