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Date

Winter 1-1978

Description

This aerial image of downtown Charleston has Meeting St. running diagonally across the picture plane. St. Michael’s Church (1752-61) is at center left, is significant because it is the oldest religious structure in the city. It was designed by an architect by the name of Gibson (Simons & Lapham) and continues to be an active Episcopal church.

Just up the street is the Fireproof Building, also known as the County Records Building. It was built in 1822 and is the country’s oldest surviving fireproof building. The architect, Robert Mills, relied primarily on removing combustible materials to make the building fireproof. It features stairwells lit by a central skylight. Some of the buildings plans were altered on site by John Spidle, the construction architect.

Across the street is Hibernian Hall (1840), which was used in the Democratic Convention of 1860. The front of the building features and Ionic portico with a gilded Irish harp over the door, and indicator of the Hibernian Society’s original function as a group to aid Irish imigrants.

On the horizon, just before the harbor, is the Fort Sumter Hotel, completed in the 1920s as a luxury hotel and later turned into residential housing.

Notes

Simons, Albert and Lapham, Samuel. The Early Architecture of Charleston. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970)

Poston, Jonathan H. The Buildings of Charleston: A Guide to the City’s Architecture. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997) pp. 186-187

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibernian_Hall_%28Charleston,_South_Carolina%29 (accessed 30 Nov 2011)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireproof_Building

(accessed 30 Nov 2011)

Rights

This object from the Chester E. Smolski photographic slides and publications, housed by the Rhode Island College Special Collections, and any of its digital surrogates are the intellectual property of Rhode Island College. This digital object is protected by copyright and/or related rights. The digital material presented here is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This content can be used, shared, or adapted for educational and scholarly purposes. For permissions to use this item please contact digitalcommons@ric.edu. All uses must include appropriate attribution.

Creator 1 Role

Photographer

Creator 2 Role

Architect

Creator 3 Role

Architect

Creator 4 Role

Architect

Recommended Citation

Chester E. Smolski photographic slides and publications, MSS-0041, Special Collections, James P. Adams Library, Rhode Island College.

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Keywords

aerial, land use, Meeting St, historic, neoclassicism, religious buildings

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