The Embedded Landscapes of the Charleston Single House, 1780-1820

Excerpt: 

"C. C. Hines, a representative of the Philadelphia-based Insurance Company of North America, reported from Charleston in 1860: 'There are more little, old, odd, awkward buildings here than I ever saw in one town before! Brick with tile roofs prevail tolerably well peppered with frames here & there.... Dwellings do not look so well as one would expect to see in so large a town.' Like many other visitors before and since, Hines was struck by the peculiarities of Charleston's urban landscape. 'Old,' 'odd,' and 'awkward' are terms that evoke a sense of a local architecture which is at once curiously exotic and disquieting. Moreover, Hines extended these adjectives to the whole of the city and not just to one or two specific buildings. Hines concluded that the architectural landscape was a paradox. Charleston was large enough and old enough to warrant the expectation of an affluent cosmopolitan culture; the impression given by the city's houses, however, suggested outdated manners and architectural constraint.

A prominent townhouse form that shaped Hines's impressions was the Charleston single house. Its distinctive features included a gable-end orientation to the street, a walled or fenced lot, and multiple outbuildings packed into a deep, narrow rear yard. The single house, more than any other Charleston building type, remains the urban dwelling that distinguishes the city's architectural character. But it also remains little understood. Why did the form develop? How did it compare to other Charleston townhouses? How did it work as residence and statement of social order and economic values? To address these questions requires us to examine the dramatic rise of the single house and its defining impact on the streetscapes of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Charleston.

Like Hines, we observe and then learn from the buildings and environments we study. The use of architecture as evidence enables us to introduce new questions into the domains of social and cultural history, not to mention the "old" architectural history. Vernacular architecture studies approach buildings as the products of human interaction culturally. It combines the methods and perspectives of historical archaeology, cultural geography, social history, and folklife studies. We are engaged in a kind of above-ground excavation that seeks pattern through the rigorous recording of objects situated in multiple contexts. On one level, context is purely material: we seek to describe the object or site in terms of its physical attributes-material, fabrication, ornamentation, form, and color. On a second level, context consists of place and time. On a third level, our contextual investigations are cultural we seek to evaluate the object or site in multiple domains including those identifying proxemic, functional, communicative, and symbolic interactions. Thus, contextual considerations begin with the 'material' part of material culture and work toward the interpretation of culture."

Herman, Bernard L. "The Embedded Landscapes of the Charleston Single House, 1780-1820." Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture Vol 7 (1997): 41-57.