City Directories and History: GEORGE EVELEIGH HOUSE
Constructed 1743; renovated and restored early-twentieth century
“Although this house is set back from the street and has an asymmetrically placed front door leading onto a front piazza, it originally had a center door leading to the larger of two front rooms. Front and rear piazzas appear on the 1795 plat of the property, indicating a feature usually added after the Revolution. Nonetheless, an account of the hurricane of 1752 refers to the destruction of brick columns on the front of the building, and closer bricks in the central aperture of the second-floor brickwork confirm the presence of an early piazza. (See PDF this page – Hurricane of 1752 by Jonathan Mercantini.) The Eveleigh House is of the same floor plan as the Thomas Rose House at 59 Church Street, built eight years earlier, if slightly smaller in scale. As in the Rose House, much of the original paneling remains, with similar arched cupboards or bow fats in the second-floor drawing room. Most of the original mantels were removed long ago. In the early-twentieth century mantels from the demolished Nathaniel Heyward House on East Bay Street were installed in the principal room and the two rear rooms on the first floor were combined to create a dining room. Of particular interest on the exterior are the brickwork and window openings with segmental arched heads.
George Eveleigh was a prosperous deerskin trader in Charles Town when he purchased a lot lying across Vanderhorst Creek just outside the former city wall line. The creek was filled and is known today as Water Street, and with this filling Church Street was extended to White Point. Eveleigh sold the property about ten years later to John Bull, a wealthy planter in Prince William Parish. The Bull family later subdivided the rear of the lot facing Meeting Street, where they subsequently constructed 34 Meeting Street. A later purchaser of 39 Church Street was the eighteenth-century chemist and naturalist Jean Louis Polony, a Santo Domingan refugee.”
Information from: The Buildings of Charleston – J.H. Poston for the Historic Charleston Foundation, 1997
Other sources: Charleston Tax Payers of Charleston, SC in 1860-61, Dwelling Houses of Charleston by Alice R.H. Smith – 1917, Charleston 1861 Census Schedule, and a 1872 Bird’s Eye View of Charleston, S.C. The Hist. Charleston Foundation may also have additional data at: Past Perfect
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