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    Charleston Interiors
    Charleston Interiors
    Charleston Interiors
    Ebook410 pages1 hour

    Charleston Interiors

    By Samuel Chamberlain and Narcissa Chamberlain

    2.5/5

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    About this ebook

    This splendid pictorial survey depicts 51 historic homes of Charleston, South Carolina. Over 300 photographs, accompanied by descriptive text, depict exquisite 18th- and 19th-century houses and their interiors. Includes illustrations of Ashley Hall, Crayton Hall, the Joseph Manigault house, as well as the homes of Colonel William Rhett, John Edwards, Charles Pinckney, and others.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateJan 30, 2013
    ISBN9780486157573
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      Book preview

      Charleston Interiors - Samuel Chamberlain

      THE GREEN DRAWING ROOM—THE NATHANIEL RUSSELL HOUSE

      MANTEL DETAIL

      The Gaillard-Bennett House

      Copyright

      Copyright © 1956 by Samuel Chamberlain

      Copyright © renewed 1984 by Narcisse Chamberlain and Stephanie Chamberlain

      All rights reserved under Pan American and International Copyright Conventions.

      Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 895 Don Mills Road, 400-2 Park Centre, Toronto, Ontario M3C 1W3. Published in the United Kingdom by David & Charles, Brunel House, Forde Close, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 4PU.

      Bibliographical Note

      This Dover edition, first published in 2002, is an unabridged republication of the work published under the title Southern Interiors of Charleston. South Carolina by Hastings House, Publishers, New York, 1956.

      The original 1956 edition of this work contained a tipped-in Color Frontispiece between the Frontispiece and the title page. In this Dover edition that image is reproduced in black and white on page 6.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Chamberlain, Samuel, 1895

      [Southern interiors of Charleston, South Carolina]

      Charleston interiors/Samuel Chamberlain and Narcissa Chamberlain.

      p. cm.

      Unabridged republication of the work published under the title Southern interiors of Charleston, South Carolina by Hastings House, in 1956.

      Includes index.

      9780486157573

      1. Architecture, Domestic—South Carolina—Charleston. 2. Interior architecture—South Carolina—Charleston. 3. Interior decoration—South Carolina—Charleston. I.

      Chamberlain, Narcissa G. II. Title.

      NA7238.C3 C48 2002

      729’.24’09757915—dc2t

      2001042343

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

      Historic Charleston is a city of multiple charms, any one of which might be the theme of a book. Its half-hidden gardens, for example, provide a subject full of surprises and beauty . . .

      The tradition of fine decorative ironwork is firmly established in Charleston. Architects and draftsmen have long since joined forces to publish illustrated volumes about it . . .

      Visitors who stroll down these venerable streets are captivated by old buildings, so remarkably reminiscent of Europe. . A photographic essay on Charleston’s smiling exteriors would be picturesque . . .

      And finally, Charleston is a city of enchanting vistas to tempt the discriminating camera. Ignoring such blandishments with difficulty, the lens behind this book is focused on another, and more intimate subject, the interiors beyond Charleston’s hospitable thresholds . . .

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright Page

      FOREWORD

      MEETING STREET

      CHURCH STREET

      LEGARE STREET

      TRADD STREET

      ALONG THE BAY SHORE

      NORTH OF BROAD STREET

      NEIGHBORING PLANTATIONS

      INDEX - of Text and Captions

      The Drawing Room—The colonel john Stuart House

      FOREWORD

      The city of Charleston, South Carolina—to paraphrase a familiar epigram about Boston —is less a place than a way of life. To an extraordinary degree the grace of Southern living has persisted in this peninsula city; the warm climate, the relaxed pace and the tradition of three o’clock dinner combine to preserve the charm of the past on this historic strip of land embraced by the Cooper and the Ashley Rivers. The city is something of a phenomenon. In spite of war, bombardment, flood, hurricane, pestilence and earthquake, it has probably retained more of its beauty than any Colonial city on the continent. Because the earliest houses have been destroyed by a variety of disasters—and because of the sad economic plight of the South after the War between the States, when building activity practically ceased—most of the old residences which remain fall into the Georgian and Federal periods, the latter defined locally as Adam. This poverty, which prevailed throughout much of the late 19th century, brought with it a certain blessing, for it kept out the scourge of Victorian architecture and furniture which afflicted more prosperous communities.

      The grandeur of early 19th-century living may have disappeared, but Charleston still clings to a reasonable facsimile, still retains its own individuality and aroma. High-ceilinged drawing rooms with crystal chandeliers and damask hangings, mahogany sideboards glistening with family silver, formal gardens and broad verandas—these are still the hallmark of Charleston, despite the noisy intrusion of this mechanistic century.

      Today the graceful Charleston way of life excites a great deal of admiration among travelers who come to the peninsula city in ever-increasing numbers, particularly in the early spring. The chill, uncompromising month of March, unwelcome in most parts of these United States, is kind to Charleston. Eager Northerners and sun-tanned sybarites from Florida join in a mass invasion at this enchanted moment when the sun is bright, the air is cool, and the flowers are at their peak of beauty. It is then that Charleston’s three famous gardens, Magnolia, Cypress and Middleton, aflame with azaleas and camellias, are besieged by visitors. A generous surge of hospitality makes itself felt in the time-honored city. It extends beyond gardens, churches, museums and shops, too, right across the thresholds of Charleston’s exquisite old houses. For a period of several weeks, guided tours through these stately homes of Charleston become one of the city’s most gratifying attractions. Church and garden clubs arrange many of these tours, but the most active organization in this field has been the admirable Historic Charleston Foundation. Through its efforts, the beauty of Charleston’s interiors is revealed to thousands of genuinely interested people each year.

      The fortunate visitor who is guided through a good cross-section of Charleston houses comes away enchanted, his mind crowded with cherished impressions. The composite picture of so much ancestral furniture, sensitive architecture, subtle color and skillful wood-carving is memorable. But, due to the frailties of the human mind, it is also forgettable. A book illustrating these and many other old Charleston interiors should provide a welcome reminder for this faintly befuddled visitor, and should prove to be a precious document to less fortunate beings who must visit the city through the printed page, not to mention architects, decorators and antiquarians. This was our thought after taking the tour and finding one small guidebook to be the best and only souvenir available.

      The bibliography of Charleston, however, is awe-inspiring, even alarming, in its completeness and especially so to new writers venturing on the scene. Could there possibly be justification for another book on this much-treated area ? Certainly it would be presumptuous to write of Charleston’s history, or its personalities, even its architecture and gardens. All of them have had gifted, well-documented interpreters. But on one theme, strangely enough, there seemed to be room for embellishment. A careful search of available books convinced us that an illustrated volume depicting Southern interiors as they exist in old Charleston and in the surrounding Low Country would be very much in order.

      The result is primarily a book of pictures. This does not aspire to be a history, even though a good deal of the city’s rich past creeps into the captions. The story is told with carefully composed photographs, taken indoors and out and pointed up with a tailored text. However, there are gaps in a narrative form of this kind, and it is the object of this Foreword to fill some of them and to sketch at least the basic background of Charleston’s historic architecture.

      Charleston was founded on its present site shortly after 1669, under a grant from King Charles II. The Carolinas, a tract then stretching presumably to the Pacific Ocean, were given to a group of the King’s favorites, known as the Lords Proprietors, to colonize and exploit as they wished. Planters came here from the Barbados; French Huguenots arrived seeking religious freedom; and in time groups of other nationalities landed, among them English Puritans, Germans, Dutch, Scotch-Irish and Swiss.

      The colonists were soon protesting the rule of the overbearing Lords Proprietors who turned deaf ears to their complaints and ignored their protests against injustices. In 1719 the revolt was complete and the colony became a province of the Crown. A class of prosperous planters grew up in this romantic Low Country, so well suited to the cultivation of rice and,

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