11buildingsmanners.pdf

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Buildings,

Manners

and

Laws

The Charleston

Single

House

as a Definer

of

Urban

Form

and

Shaper

of

City Life

Robert

Russell

When

Charles

Town

was

incorporatedasCharleston, South

Carolinain 1783,justover 100yearsafterbeingestablished, she

adoptedashermunicipalmottotheLatin phrase Aedes,

Mores

Legaque

Curat -"shetakescareofherbuildings,her

manners

andher

laws."Ittellsa lotabout

what

kindofplace Charlestonis.

The

build-ingsI wanttotalkabout here arehouses,oneparticular- and

particu-lartoCharleston- housetypeespecially. Itis

known

as the"single

house."Thereare,as I will show,particular

ways

ofliving

-

manners

-

thatgowiththiskindofhouseandwith acity

made

up of these

houses. There

may

not everhave beenanylawsin Charleston

regulat-ingbuildingtypes(thoughtherewere,andcontinuetobe,plentyof

buildingregulations)butthereseemstohave been somethingthat

urgedindividualsin a similar directionovera long periodoftime.

And

itcertainlyis thecasethat

some

generalprinciples

-

rules, ifnot quite

laws

-

canbe

drawn

froman examinationof Charleston domestic

architecturethatarestill suitable foruse today.

The

Single

House

The

singlehouseisuniquetoCharleston.This is aremarkable

thingtosayaboutanyarchitectural form,forthere are very few examples ofthissortofsingularityinthe historyofarchitecture.

The

most immediately recognizablecharacteristic ofthe single houseis

RobertRussellisAddlestoneProfessorofArchitecturalHistoryat the

(2)

ROBERT

RUSSELL

The

Robert

Brewton

house

as

it

looked

in

the

1700

(above),

and today

(right). It is

frequently cited in literature

about

Charleston

as

the

earliest

surviving

single

thatitisturnedsidewaysto thestreet

-

thatis,ithas

itsshortside

where

most havetheirlongside.' This

is not, in itself,

enough

to define the Charleston

single house, forthereare

numerous

places

where

housesareorientedin thismanner. Thereareplenty

of

examples

of houses that

have merely been

cranked around on their lots, even in Charleston.

The

Robert

Brewton

house, ofaround 1733

(pic-turedabove), isfrequently citedinliterature about

Charlestonas theearliestsurvivingsinglehouse. It

isindeed turned sidewaystothe street, butall that

means

isthatitlookslikearegularGeorgianhouse

thathasbeenmislaid.

Now

itis true thatoldviews

show

thehouseasonce havinghad

more

to itthan

itdoesnow, soitispossiblethatitmightrepresent

an early stage in single house development.- It is

onlya single

room

wide,

which

is

where

the

name

forthetype

comes

from, but I

would

not go so far

astocallitasinglehouse.

Tobea singlehouse,it

must

haveaporch,

some-thing like the

Robert

Brewton

house

had

a

century ago.

And

the

porchmust beattachedto

the side ofthehouse,not

toitsfront.InCharleston

the

common

termforthis

sideporchispiazza.^

The

piazzais onthe

side ofthe single house

for several reasons,allof

them

good.

Many

houses

in Charleston, single or

otherwise, are brought

rightup tothe streetand

sothereisno

room

fora front porch.

The

piazza

can serve an important

function as a sun break

and general shading

de-viceforthehouse,

which

is

why

it generally

ap-pearsonthesouthorwest

sides of houses, rather

thanthenorthoreast.But

the

most

important

rea-son that piazzas are

lo-catedontheside,itseems

tome, is because that is

where

the frontdoor ofthe singlehouse is.

What

this adds

up

to is a rectangular house

turnedsidewaystothestreet,withtheentrancedoor

set

more

orless inthemiddle ofthelongside,rather

than on thestreet. Itdoes not takea lotof thinking

torecognizea problemhere. This isapatently

un-satisfactoryhousetype.Itisnot, clearly,a

row

house.

Neitherisitinanyreasonable sensea self-contained,

freestanding house, forone doesnot experience it

as such. It lacks almost all streetpresence, forits

most

dignified element, the entryway, is hidden

down

the side ofthehouse.

The

piazza, thatmulti-purposeproblem solver,

solves all ofthese potential problems.

One

ofthe

mostcharacteristicelementsoftheCharlestonsingle

housepiazza isthatitisnotonlya side porch, but

also acts as a

main

entrance to the house, for its

streetsideisnotmerelydefined

by more

balusters,

but isscreened

by

a solidwallwith adoorinit.

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housepresentsan entrancedoor baywithtwo

win-dow

baysnexttoit(seephoto,below).

Upon

looi<;-ing up at the second floor, however, it

becomes

evident that the entrance door leads not into the

house, butintoaspace alongside it: thepiazza.

The

final characteristic, but still curious,

ele-ment

ofthe singlehouseisthatits"back"side-the

side

away

fromtheentranceandthepiazza

-

is

fre-quently only marginally fenestrated. There might

wellbe a

window

letting lightinto thestair hall in

the center ofthe house, but the two

main

rooms

themselveswillhave no

windows

onthe side

away

fromthe piazza.

A

flexible

form

A

characteristicofthe singlehouse type is its

remarkable elasticity. It can expand and contract

withoutlosing itscoherence;

more

so, I think,than

anyotherkindofAmericanhouse.

They

canbequite

modest(seephoto, following page), ortheycan be

very grand indeed,but it is the

same

type, merely expanding or shrinking as resources and lot sizes

allow.

The

singlehouse canballoonuptoalmost five

stories,orshrink

down

toone,butitis stillthe

same

housetype:stackedfloors,each withessentiallytwo

rooms

dividedbyacirculation core.Itisfrequently thecasethatsinglehouses have doublepiazzasnow, one on top ofanother, but there is

some

evidence

thatup until about 1840 they onlyhad onepiazza,

atthe entrance level. If thisis true,and it

seems

to

be,it

makes

it

more

difficulttoaccepttheargument

that the piazza is simply a logical response to the

miserable

summer

climate in Charleston. In this

viewthepiazza

was

createdprimarilyas asunshade

to screen the living quarters ofthe house

proper.-Thereisno doubtthatpiazzasdothisverywell,but

itisdifficult toarguethattheirprimary purpose

was

merelythis.

As

withthe

more

generalargumentthat thesingle house

was

aone-dimensional functional

responsetothesemi-tropicalCharlestonclimate,this

contention does not answer all the questions that

arise.

Why,

forexample,ifthepiazza

was

conceived

as a sun break,

would

it take about 100 years for

iaii

^^^^

«

*

iw

"'«

'!!«

?"

s^

te

The ground

floor street

facade

of

the

single

house

presents

an entrance door

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ROBERT RUSSELL

Charlestonianstofigureoutthattwoofthemstacked

on

top ofeach other

would

shade both the

main

floorsofthe house?*

Itseems, in fact, tobethe casethatthe

func-tionofthepiazza

was

asan intermediateand

medi-ating zone between private and public aspects of

living inthe single house. That is, the completely

privaterealmofhouse properandthe increasingly publicnatureofthe areasbeginningoutside thefront

door: the yard, the viewto the street, thestreet

it-self, andfinallythecityas awhole. Itpermittedthe

housetoturn

away

fromthestreetbutstillact likea

"normal" house

with a street door. Recall the

Charleston piazzaisnotjust

a side porch.

The

piazza

dooranditssurroundactas

a screening wall,

making

the activities on the piazza

at least partially private.

This tricky

entranceway

permitted narrow

Charles-tonhousestomaintaintheir

semi-symmetry

as well as theirsemi-privacy.Withthe

streetdoor screen, and the

nearly unfenestrated back

wallofthe singlehousenext

door, thepiazzaprovideda

place

where

Charleston

familiescouldexpandabit.

Butonlyabit.

The

tra-dition until very recently has been that

you

behaved

on

thepiazza essentially as

if

you

wereinpublic, rather

than at

home.

This meant, for instance, that

men

would

not

remove

their suitcoats while on the

pi-azzaevenintheconsiderableheatofsummer.This

was

becausepiazzas aregenerallyatleastpartially

visiblefromthestreet.

They

didnotftinctionas front

porchesdid: thatis,asanofficially,publiclyvisible

place buffering the house from the street. Rather

they linkedthehouse tothe streetby providing an

intermediate zone,understoodbyCharlestoniansto

bebothpartofthe houseandatthe

same

time

vis-ible

-

evenifonly imperfectly

-

tothe largerworld,

andtherefore a partofthatworld.

You

sitona front

porchtosee

what

ishappeningonthesfreet.

You

sit

onapiazzatoenjoya

modicum

of privacyina

town

whereprivacyisa rarecommodity.

The

great

Ameri-can20"' centuryprivatearea

-

the backyard

-

had

not yet

come

to exist generally in Charleston.

Ei-therit

was

an areaoccupiedbystaff- slavesbefore

1865, servants after that, orit

was where you

kept

yourchickens,perhapsa pig, andthe privy. Privies

were disappearing in the 1950s and '60s, but

you

couldstillfind theoccasionalchickenin

downtown

Charlestonrear yardsasrecently asthe early '70s.

The

backyardis,thus, arecent Charleston

discov-ery.

By

far the

most

common

appearance ofthe

houseinthenineteenthcenturyisinitsworkingclass

Single

houses

of

the

more

modest

variety.

The house

type

has remarkable

elasticity: it

can

expand and

contract

with-out

losing its

coherence.

version.Therearehundreds of

what

mightbecalled

Chevy-versionsinglehouses survivingaroundtown,

especiallyintheboroughssettledduringthe 1840s.

They

are

midway

between

the full-blown, grand models andthepost-war freedman'scottage.

Invari-ably they are

two

storied, with four

rooms - two

downstairs and

two

up. Occasionally they have a

habitablegarret,but usuallynot.

They

areclose

to-gether, so thatthestandard singlehouse rhythm of

thehouse-piazza-yard is

much

speededup.

Never-theless, all the necessary elements are there:

side-ways

house, street door, piazza,and unfenestrated

houseback.For contemporaryplannersand

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per-hapsthemosthelpful

-

certainlythemost useful

-thingisthattheseChevysareveryoftenfoundcheek by jowl with the Cadillac single houses without a jarring note. Thereareneighbors of working-class

single houses, and a few neighborhoods

-

streets, really

-

of grand singles,but forthemostpart

you

can find acompact and thorough

mix

ofsize,which

translatestoa

mix

ofclass.

By

thispoint-theantebellum years

-

thehouse

type had

become

Charlestontradition, andifthere

had everbeen

some

sort oforiginal external

pres-sure on property owners that had tended to steer

them

inthe directionofthe singlehouse,ithadlong

disappeared. This

now

was

simply

how

Charlesto-niansbuilt theirhousesandlivedinthem.

What

we

can learn

from

thesinglehouse

Thereare, I believe,things thatcanbe learned fromCharleston'shousingstory;thingsthatperhaps

may

be foundto have continuing use andvalue in

thepresent day.

The

single house,aspopularand

common

asit

was

in 18^and 19*-century Charleston,suffered in

the20"". ft

was

too local andout ofthe ordinaryas

Charlestonians shifted to

more

mainstream forms

ofdomesticity.Early20*-century

Charleston hasits shareof

four-squares and Williamsburg

cot-tages, while single houses are pretty thin on the ground.

Even

old-line Charlestonians

seem

to

have beenalittleembarrassedby

theirsingulardomesticpast. The Dwelling

Houses

ofCharleston,

publishedin 1917, and stillrevered locally,

essen-tially ignored the single house type.

When

it

was

necessarytoincludeasinglehouse in thisbook, in

almost every case the exterior is ignored and the

elegant interiorsare illustrated. In the Depression,

when

it

became

necessaryforthe firsttime to

pro-videhousingforthetemporarilydown-and-out,the

projectthat

was

builtinthemiddleof

town

replaced

a lot ofold single houses with housingthat, while

pleasantenough,

was

unremarkable.'

Before continuinginthisvein,itisnecessaryto

turn back for a

moment

to

make

a point.

Around

1850an Englishvisitor toCharlestonobservedwhat

he obviously considered to be a remarkable

phe-nomenon.

He

said that Charleston had no middle

class,it

was

either richor

poor

My

suspicionisthat

he

was

lodging with

members

ofthe former class,

and that in comparison - in the

view

from the

pi-azza, as it

were

—

everyone else looked to occupy

thelattercategory. Butin 1850the apparent

differ-ence

would

have been one

more

ofdegree than of

kind, particularly

when

looking at dwellings.

By

1850, the difference

was

the deadly one of

com-plete otherness.

The

poor had been

made

to look

poor, and present-day Charleston has its share of

dreary anddismal housingprojects that stigmatize

their residents by the

mere

fact oftheir living in

them.

By

the early 1980s the

then-new

mayor

of

Charleston, JoeRiley, hadrecognizedthis.

He

was

not alone in his concern, but he had a

weapon

to

fight the drawbacks of mainstreampublic housing

unavailable to

most

otherpublic figures searching

foranalternative:theadvantageoflocal history.

As

the Charleston Housing Authority began to

move

into scattered site housing,

Mayor

Riley,

more

clearly perhaps than anyone else, recognized that

Charleston's ace inthe hole couldbe found in the

singlehouse.

The

wholeideaofscatteredsite

hous-ingofcourseisthatthepreviously stigmatizedpoor

The

flexibility

of

the single

house

provides

housing

authorities

a

way

to

avoid

stigmatizing

the

poor

when

developing

scattered-site

housing

projects.

- stigmatized

by

theiraddress, and whattheir

ad-dress looked like

- would

beable to get out from underneath that burden by

moving

into

more

neu-fral, less distinctly poverty-stricken quarters. But

how

isonetoneutralizepublichousing?In

Charles-ton it

was

done byadaptingarecognizable

domes-tic form

-

the single house - to public housing

purposes.

New

Urbanists, Andres

Duany

perhaps most

vocally,have beenarguingforyearsthatpeople

re-spond to differences in form in housing

more

im-mediately than they do to differences in size.

By

approaching a recognizable house type for

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ROBERT

RUSSELL

Authorityeffectivelydisguiseditsunits. Thereisa

lesson tobe learned here, one

whose

subtlety and

sophistication are generallylostonthesortof

build-ersand developers

whose

idea of

good

urbanform

extendstolittle

more

thanporchesandpicket fences.

Occasionally one finds something like the single

house referred to as a "side yard house." This

re-duction ofthe type to a relationship between the

house andits lotis anunthinking suburban

degra-dationofwhat isinfactmerelya partofthe larger

whole. EarlierIpointedoutthat

many

singlehouses

are essentially devoid of

windows

on their

back-side. There are also

many

that have

windows

too,

frequently

windows

thatwereadded. Butthis

char-acteristichas givenrisetoadistinctCharleston

phe-nomenon

known

as the "northside manners."

You

may

have

windows

onthebackside ofyourhouse, but

you

arenotsupposed tolookoutofthem.

You

may

not

comment

onanythingthat

you

see inyour

neighbor's yard, sincethis

would

bean admission

thatyou hadviolated theprivacyprinciple. Itis

per-hapsalittlecomicaltoputitthisway,butthe

prin-ciple

makes

alotofsenseinCharleston,

which

has

a cityfabric thatisremarkablydense

by American

standards.

The

singlehouserequires aneighboring

housetobe complete. Paradoxically

you

need your

neighbortohave yourprivacy.

Because style is frequently confused with

ty-pology bypeople

who

don'tthinkvery hard about

the differences,itisoften thecasethatpeople

-

too

frequently architects

-

object to contemporary

re-vivalsofthe singlehouseformasasupposed

mani-festation ofsocial conservatism, along the lines of

objections to the current preoccupation (in

some

quarters) with frontporches. But in Charleston at least, large partsoftheurbanfabrichave developed

to

accommodate

the singlehouse.

One

may,infact,

rightly objectto the efforts of those

who

have

ig-nored that fabric and have attempted to

impose

thoughtlessalternativeson it.

On

the other hand, it is possible to find in

Charleston examplesoftypological continuitythat

transcend

mere

issues ofstyle.

On

one block, for

instance, onecanfindnearly 150 years of building

evident in five contiguous houses.

One

dates to

around 1840. There are

two

other 1P^'-century

ex-amples,andtwo werebuilt afterthe devastationof

Hurricane

Hugo

in 1989. Further,theyare allright

nextdoortoabig,early19'''-centuryplantation-style

house.

As

straightforwardas the singlehouses are,

they do not detract from the grandeur ofthe big

house. Butneitheris the grandhous-i necessaryto

the dignityofthe singlehouses,

which

donotsuffer

unduly

by

proximity. It isalso ap.^actical (and not

insignificant)factthattheproperty value ofthebig

house has notbeen diminished because ithappens

tobelocatednexttothesesmall houses.

AlthoughtheCharlestonsinglehouseisindeed

asingularform,I wanttoarguethat

what

it

prima-rily demonstrates isthe valueofarchitectural type

inrelation to place. Butthisdoes not

mean

that all

types are equally useful or valuable.

The

postwar

American

ranch house is a type that is neither as useful noras valuable as the single house as a de-finer of coherent urban form.

Whenever

ranch housesare introducedinto

towns

andcities the

ur-ban form is quickly reduced to incoherence. I

am

certainlynot arguingthatif

we

areevertolearn

how

tospeakclearlyagainasurbanistsanddesigners

we

must

return to the single house. But I do suggest that ithas

much

that

we

should valueasa form in

itself, asa formthatcarrieswithitsuggestionsofa particular

manner

ofthoughtandliving,andfinally

as ayardstick

-

ifnota rule

-

of

good

architectural

and urban design. (9>

Notes

'These"houses stand sidewaiebackwardinto theiryards,

andonelyendwaieswiththeirgables towardsthestreet." T.Fuller, Worthies, Exeter,quotedinA.R.HugerSmith

and D.E.

Huger

Smith, The Dwelling

Houses

of

Charleston, SouthCarolina,

New

York, 1917 (facsimile edition,

Diadem

Books,

New

York,n.d.), p.43.

-_The_drawing _in_Plate_2,_{from The Dwelling Houses of}

Charleston, was

made

in the early 20"^ century and

representsthehouseashavingadooratthe streetfront,

but nexttothe houseproperThisopenedonto asortof

gallery,called a piazza, thatled as far as the front door,

whichopenedinthemiddleofthelongsideofthehouse.

AccordingtoJonathan Poston, however{The Buildings

ofCharleston, Columbia, S.C, 1997,p. 73), thepiazza

dated to only the late 19"' century. It seems to me,

however,

much

more likely that the late-19*-century

owners wereattemptingtobringtheBrewton housemore

intoconformity withwhatCharlestonsinglehouseswere

understoodto be, thanthatitactually constitutes some

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'The_{use of}_the_ItaUanword_piazza_to_refer_to_a_covered

porchorwalkisa standard18'*'-centurypieceofEnghsh

misunderstanding, derivedfromtheInigo Jones" Covent

Garden of 1631. Jones,

who

was an Itaiophile - or at

leasta Palladiophile-createdthe first public square in

England andcalleditapiazza,sincehehadbeeninItaly

and had seen them. Hisfellowcountrymen,mostof

whom

had not had the pleasure of icnocking around northern

Italy,thoughtthatthetermpiazzareferredtothecovered

walkwaysedgingthe square ontwo ofits sides, rather

thantotheopen marketspaceinthe center.

By

themiddle

ofthe18"'century. Dr.Johnson'sdictionarydefined piazza

solely as"awalk underaroofsupportedbycolumns."

^ I want to thank Carter Hudgins, director of Historic

CharlestonFoundation,forthispieceof information. '_If_this_were_the_case_then_it_{should follow}_that_all_piazzas wouldshadethewesternorsouthern facesofthehouses

thatthey were on, since these sidesreceivethefiercest

direct sunlight. But since there areatleastafewsingle

houses with their piazzas on the "wrong side," this

reductivistexplanationfailsto satisfy.

*"The_reader

may

_perhaps_have_noticed_that_I_have_avoided

the entire issue ofthe dating of the single house type.

Thisisbecauseitisessentiallyunknown.GeneWaddell,

aknowledgeablestudentof Charlestonarchitecture,feels

thatthe singlehouse wasinventedintheaftermathofthe

fire of 1740, which destroyed a substantial part ofthe

town. Kenneth Severens,

who

is presently researching

justthisquestion,isworking onthe hypothesisthatthe singlehouseappearsinthelatercolonial period,butdoes

nottieittoanyparticularCharlestondisaster.Thoughno

hard evidence has yet

come

to light, it

may

not be

unreasonabletopegthefirstappearance ofarecognizable

single house to around the middle of the 18"' century.

This wouldmean that fornearly the first centuryofits

existence, single houses were fitted with only a single piazza.

' _The_{Robert Mills}

_Manor

_is,_by_the_general_standards_of Americanpublichousing, of very highquality. Itisalso

located immediately adjacent to highly sought-after

residential areas. The new housing blocks that were

constructed in 1937 have little that relates them to

Charleston, butin acouple ofcases single houses that