Looking at Charleston
This column features residential, public, and church architecture on the Charleston peninsula. It is based on research that architectural historian Gene Waddell has amassed since 1976. Unlike most architectural scholars, Gene looks at buildings not from the point of view of their social history, but in terms of the buildings themselves: their sources of design, design features, materials, and methods of construction—all the things that the architects who designed them had to know when they conceived them. This unique perspective and wealth of information should be invaluable to residents and tourists—anyone who enjoys meandering downtown and gazing with a (very) well informed eye. Copyright Notice: all material in this series is the exclusive property of Gene Waddell. If you want to reuse any of it in any form, you must get permission in writing from chastoday@charlestontoday.net.
Daniel Heyward (Washington) House
87 Church Street • c. 1770–1772 This house was constructed by Daniel Heyward, the father of Thomas Heyward, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who grew up here. He acquired the property in 1770 and his widow inherited it in 1777. A coin dated 1772 found within a window frame provides an approximate... Read »
John Lloyd House
90 Church Street • c. 1760. This single house and the three single houses to the north of it at nos. 92–96 Church Street are examples of the best constructed single houses of the second half of the 18th century. These outstanding examples are typical in being of brick, three-stories, and three-bays wide with... Read »
Isaac Mazyck House
86 Church Street • c. 1783 The 1778 fire destroyed, for a second time, nearly all of the eastern half of Charleston which had been within its original walls. No building survived on the east side of Church Street from no. 90 through no. 54. Soon after the Revolutionary War ended, this distinctive house... Read »
Blake Tenements
2–4 Courthouse Square • 1760–1772 The site of the District Courthouse at the corner of Meeting and Broad Streets has only one of the four squares that were planned for this intersection when the town was initially laid out. At the northwest corner of the square, in the alley next to the courthouse, is... Read »
William Hendricks Tenements
83–85 Church Street • 1749–1751 This pair of buildings shares an open passage that leads to the entrances to the dwellings above. On the street side are the original shop fronts. (Notice also the difference between the two doors: the one at No. 83 is more narrow, has a different transom window above it,... Read »
Thomas Lamboll’s Tenements
8–10 Tradd Street • c. 1726 This pair of houses was built back-to-back against a common wall. Each is a mirror image of the other. The gambrel roof has a unique overhang to shed the dormers on the sides. A covenant in a 1726 deed for this property required that the alleys on each... Read »
Daniel Hext Tenement
7 Tradd Street • c. 1740 The area fire of 1740 destroyed all or nearly all houses from Broad Street to Water Street and from East Bay Street to Church Street. Consequently, the houses on both sides of Tradd from East Bay to Church were probably constructed in 1740 and afterward. But in many... Read »
James Gordon House
87 East Bay Street • c. 1792 This is a Charleston single house of unusual height and width. It is one-room wide with a central stair hall in the middle and rooms to either side. The private entrance is off the street, on the left side of the building. It is not a typical... Read »
Beale Row
95-103 East Bay Street • c. 1741 Row houses were the usual type of house constructed in cities for thousands of years, and in most American cities this was the principal type that was built. The main characteristic was a common wall shared on both sides of each building, with no space in between... Read »
Looking at Charleston
ALL THE ENTRIES in this series will derive from text and photos by architectural historian Gene Waddell, archivist at the College of Charleston. We hope these excerpts will allow you to benefit from Gene’s scholarly insight into the unique architecture of this city. The origin of Gene’s material is his unpublished, copyrighted architectural guide... Read »
The churches of Charleston
are unique in their variety, grandeur, and architecture. We give you an in-depth view.~> Read more