place

Augustus Taft House

Houses in Charleston, South Carolina
57 Laurens NW corner
57 Laurens NW corner

The Augustus Taft House is a Greek Revival house at 57 Laurens St., Charleston, South Carolina in the historic Ansonborough neighborhood. The house was constructed by Augustus Taft about 1836 using black cypress. Its interior has three fireplaces done in black Italian marble and pine flooring. The house has large, three-part windows that permit access to the piazzas.The house's interior retains the original room configuration. The front door in on the north facade and opens onto a stair hall. There are twin parlors to the right (the west side of the house) and a dining room. Behind the house is a three-story kitchen house. The house was two-story piazzas on the west side. Augustus Taft, a member of the same New England family of President Taft, built the house in 1836, and it survived a fire in 1838 that devastated most of the Ansonborough neighborhood. Taft's daughter married Pierre Gaillard Stoney, and the house remained in the family more than one hundred years. In 1865, the house was used to house freed slaves by the Freedmen's Bureau for six months.The house (both inside and out) is protected by a preservation easement given to the Historic Charleston Foundation.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Augustus Taft House (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Augustus Taft House
Laurens Street, Charleston

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Augustus Taft HouseContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 32.78551 ° E -79.93064 °
placeShow on map

Address

Laurens Street 63
29401 Charleston
South Carolina, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

57 Laurens NW corner
57 Laurens NW corner
Share experience

Nearby Places

Middleton-Pinckney House
Middleton-Pinckney House

The Middleton-Pinckney House is a historic three-story home built on a raised basement at 14 George Street, Charleston, South Carolina in the Ansonborough neighborhood. Frances Motte Middleton (a daughter of Jacob and Rebecca Brewton Motte and widow of John Middleton) began construction of the house in 1796 after purchasing a second lot adjacent to one bought by her father on George St. The house was completed by her and her second husband, Maj. Gen. Thomas Pinckney, whom she married in 1797.The couple lived in the house at least from 1801 until, on February 26, 1825, the couple sold the house to Mrs. Pinckney's son, John Middleton, for $10,000. One exception occurred in 1816, when the family resided on Legare Street, perhaps to permit the reworking of the house in the then-popular Regency style. A real estate listing ran in the Charleston City Gazette in 1816 for the sale of the house which described an "unfinished Brick Building, intended for a dwelling house" along with a kitchen house and another brick dependency. John Middleton died in 1826, and the house was sold to Mrs. Juliet Gibbes Elliott, at which time the house became known as the Elliott Mansion. The house remained a private residence until Jesse W. Starr Jr. bought it from Mrs. Elliott's estate in 1879 and resold it to the Water Works Company of Charleston in 1880. The water company was a private company until the City took over its operation in 1917. In 1988, the house became the location of the headquarters of the Spoleto Festival USA. The City of Charleston donated the house to the festival in 2002, which undertook a rehabilitation of the property. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing property to the Charleston Historic District.