City Directories and History: WILLIAM GIBBES HOUSE
Constructed circa 1772; altered circa 1795-1810; restored and altered 1929; restored 1986
“Once the house of one of Charleston’s wealthiest pre-Revolutionary merchant-planters (Wm. Gibbes), the dwelling presently known as 64 South Battery was intended to be viewed, not from the street, but from the Ashley River channel by boats approaching Gibbes’s impressive 300-foot wharf. Adjacent to the wharf the owner had a host of stores, warehouse support structures, and a coffeehouse. Gibbes completed this wood double house with elaborate tabernacle framed windows and console-bracketed central pediment in 1772; he enjoyed the property only briefly. In the occupation of Charleston in 1780 Gibbes was interned in St. Augustine, his family was evicted from the house, and the building was used as a hospital by the British army. A room-by-room inventory taken after Gibbcs’s death in 1789 mentioned extensive furnishings in rooms such as those on the first floor described as the “Front Blue Parlour” and the “Front Wainscot Parlour.” Gibbes kept twenty-two slaves on his town property.
The estate sold the property to Sarah Moore Smith, a widow, in 1794. Mrs. Smith or her son Peter made significant alterations to the house with Neoclassical mantels and door surrounds in the large upstairs drawing room and adjoining chamber, and a Federal style wrought-iron balustrade and columns in the large central hall. Mrs. Smith was the grandmother of the famous Sarah and Angelina Grimke, abolitionists and pioneers of women’s rights who grew up at 32 \ East Bay Street. In 1928 Cornelia Roebling of New York, a native of South Carolina and
daughter- in-law of the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, bought the house and made a number of alterations, including the installation of an eighteenth-century chinoiserie style room on the first floor and an extensive garden designed by Loutrel Briggs. Briggs rediscovered the double-axial parterre of the late-eighteenth century in the eastern front yard and restored it as a rose garden for Mrs. Roebling. He augmented the rest of the site with additional features including an allee and a garden pool with a fountain in the best Colonial Revival manner, completing this project in 1933.
The grounds of the William Gibbes site offer a unique perspective on an elite Charleston town property in evolution since the eighteenth century. The original kitchen and washhouse and the antebellum stable-carriage house block of brick and tabby construction with tile roofing have survived largely intact, although the stable was con-verted to garages with servants’ rooms above in 1929-30. Other early landscape features include the brick wall with arched, stuccoed recesses that surrounds the 140- by-268-foot lot (.83 acres), constructed in the 1830s; a brick privy (or “rabbit house” in Albert Simons’s 1929 drawing); and a “tea house” with romantic curvilinear gables shading a marble relief, identical to that on the family tomb at Magnolia Plantation.”
Information from: The Buildings of Charleston – J.H. Poston for the Historic Charleston Foundation, 1997
Other sources of interest: Charleston Tax Payers of Charleston, SC in 1860-61, and the Dwelling Houses of Charleston by Alice R.H. Smith – 1917. The HCF may also have additional data at: Past Perfect and further research can be uncovered at: Charleston 1861 Census Schedule
Preservation Art at Work: Courtesy of Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art: Rick Rhodes – photographer, Ronald Ramsey artist – preservationist, 2017. (For the last several decades, native Charlestonian Ronald Wayne Ramsey has focused on meticulously documenting historical buildings—particularly those slated for demolition—in his hometown. As old buildings in the historically-minded city become condemned and readied for demolition, he secrets himself inside and liberates various seemingly mundane objects from their impending destruction. Such objects, like hinges, shutter dogs, decorative ironwork, doorknobs, and other ubiquitous building artifacts gain new relevance once they become part of his salvaged collection, which traces architectural styles from Charleston’s rich architectural legacy. Along with these objects, Ramsey creates fastidiously detailed drawings of old building facades in the city. Text from the Ahead of the Wrecking Ball Exhibit – 2017)
Click on the More Information links, found under the primary image to discover additional information about the artist.
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