135 – 139 Meeting Street
City Directories and History: GIBBES MEMORIAL ART GALLERY (GIBBS MUSEUM OF ART)
Constructed circa 1905; addition 19-78 Frank P. Milburn, architect
“Frank P. Milburn, an architect whose practice was centered in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Columbia, South Carolina, and who was influential from Washington southward, designed the Gibbes Memorial Art Gallery, Charleston’s best example of the Beaux Arts style. In addition to participating in the design of the Gibbes, Milburn, as an architect for the Southern Railway, designed train stations and public buildings throughout the South. H. T. Zacharias served as contractor for the gallery, which opened on April 11,1905. The engaged front portico stands on a ground- story entry with stylized rustication, while a dome topped by pantile shaped copper shingles, surrounded by a bronze anthemion border, rises from the parapeted flat roof. A contemporary rear addition of gray stucco with large tinted glass openings was completed in 1978.
The Carolina Art Association—founded in 1857, disbanded during the Civil War, and reorganized in 1878— operated out of an art school in the Bible Depository Building at 22 Chalmers Street. A bequest of more than $10,000 from the estate of the Charleston businessman James Shoolbred Gibbes to the city, under the direction of the progressive mayor J. Adger Smyth and the Association, provided the necessary funding for construction of the new James S. Gibbes Memorial Art Gallery. The museum houses not only a definitive collection of early portraits, paintings, and miniatures related to Charleston and the Lowcountry but contemporary works as well.”
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 or The Charleston City Guide of 1872
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