From Statehouse to Courthouse: An Architectural History of South Carolina's Colonial Capitol and Charleston Courthouse

From Statehouse to Courthouse traces the historical and architectural development of one of the most important but least understood buildings constructed in eighteenth-century South Carolina. Built at great expense in 1753 as the colony’s first statehouse, the structure, located at Charleston’s famous "Four Corners of Law," housed all branches of provincial government, was the site of many significant events of the American Revolution, and became the county’s courthouse when the state capital moved to Columbia. In this richly illustrated and extensively documented history, Carl R. Lounsbury chronicles the struggle to erect such an impressive civic structure, assesses the architectural significance of the building, and comments on the edifice’s changing appearance and use over two and a half centuries.

An architectural historian intimately involved with the analysis of the building’s original fabric, Lounsbury helped to recover surprising amounts of early brickwork, plaster, and paint beneath layers of modern sheetrock, wallpaper, and shag carpeting. From these findings and carefully gleaned documentation, he charts the fortunes of the building.

In addition to chronicling the building’s eventful architectural and social history, Lounsbury details the detective work necessary to rescue this significant structure from obscurity and the debate that restoration generates within communities. His account of the colonial capitol serves as a blueprint for the proper methods of investigating early building practices and of garnering consensus for the restoration of a nationally important architectural treasure.

About the Author:
Carl R. Lounsbury is an architectural historian with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. An author of Architects and Builders in North Carolina: A History of the Practice of Building, he has taught early American architectural history at several institutions in Virginia, including Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, and the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. Lounsbury lives in Williamsburg, Virginia.