Joseph Manigault House - Charleston, SC - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

County of home: Charleston County
Location of home: Meetin St. & John St., Chrleston
Built: 1790
Architect: Gabriel Manigault

"The house is patterned as a parallelogram, its right-angled severity broken effectively by a stairwell bow on the north wall, a bowed piazza to the west and offset wide porches on the south where the formal garden affords a pleasant view toward the domed gate house.

"The house is extremely well-constructed. The wooden columns of the portico are mounted on stone plinths to prevent rot and between the subflcoring and the heart-pine flooring is a layer of lime to discourage insects. Behind each baseboard exists an additional layer of bricks to prevent the space from being used as a concourse for rodents. Heavy pine rafters support the slate roof.

"The intricate ceiling over the front stairway was restored in 1930 by Mrs. Francis B. Crowninshield of Boston.

"Adjoining the library is a small room in which musical instruments were kept In the dining room is a door adjacent to the service stairs, leading down to a rear door at ground level and from there to the kitchen building; adjoining the master bedroom is a dressing room, at that time an innovation. The rooms are no longer the square boxes of earlier Charleston houses, but tend toward rectangles and, in the case of the hall, terminate in an apse enclosing the winding stairway. This apse, on the exterior, is expressed as a rounded tower.

"The east end of the dining room terminates in a segmental concave curve giving free foot space for the butler in serving. This curvature is echoed at the west end of the building by a two-story piazza which is also segmental in design and which balances the composition without being rigidly symetrical. These instances of enclosing space within arcs of a circle are taken directly from Robert Adam's Italian influenced designs." ~ NRHP Nomination Form