Tale Of A Charleston Single House

The 1836 Greek Revival house, built by a member of the prominent Taft family, remains under the diligent care of Umbrian-born preservationists with a light touch.

- Steve Gross

ON A QUIET STREET IN the historic Anson borough neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina, a stately “single house” with restrained Greek Revival details survives with original elements intact. (The single house is a form almost unique to Charleston—one with its narrow side, often two or three bays wide, and its gable end facing the street and the longer side, often five bays wide, running perpendicular to the street. Thus, the piazzas open to a side garden.) Built in 1836 by Augustus R. Taft, a member of the prominent New England family that included President William Howard Taft, the house stayed in the family for more than a century. It was inherited by Augustus Taft’s daughter, who married into the old Charleston Stoney family. With the exception of six months in 1865—when the residence was confiscated by the Freedman’s Bureau to house freed slaves after the Civil War—the house had remained in the Taft family lineage.