Homes of Charleston

by Dale Powell

Title

Homes of Charleston

Artist

Dale Powell

Medium

Photograph

Description

Homes of Historic Charleston SC

Constructed ca. 1755; restored 1935. This house lies very close, if not immediately adjacent, to the site of the original city wall and was constructed on a portion of Grand Modell Lot No. 1. Adam Daniel conveyed this lot, inherited from his father, to George Sommers with a "tenement" in 1755. Stylistically the house seems to date from the mid-18th century, particularly due to the profiles of the moldings in its 2nd-floor rooms and the paneling in its 1st-floor dining room. A surviving plat shows the layout of the single house and its extensive 2-story outbuildings to the rear of the lot; these structures still survive. Formerly this building, like many Charleston single houses, maintained an entrance on the street facade and a front ground-floor room for commercial purposes. In the early 19th century the door was closed and the piazzas added, as was the late Federal style piazza door screen. The bend in East Bay just beyond this lot led the area to be known in the 1700s as Sommers Corner. This very bend impelled the builder of the Sommers House to follow the diagonal of the street in the construction of the front facade. Passing through several prominent merchant families, including those of John Teasdale, a British officer who became the first Charleston factor to ship cotton to Europe, and John Fraser, founder of the important mercantile firm Fraser and Trenholm, the dwelling suffered from deterioration in the early-20th century. Elizabeth Hanahan, a pioneering realtor in Charleston, restored the house in 1935 as her family's residence, with the assistance of preservation architects Albert Simons and Samuel S. Lapham.

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July 5th, 2013

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