13 www.CharlestonWomenPodcast.com | www.ReadCW.com | www.Instagram.com /CharlestonWomen was purchased in the 1940s by northern businessman Harry Guggenheim, and in 1997 the Guggenheim Foundation sponsored a master plan for developing the island. Many of the homes are built following the traditional “Charleston single house” design: a narrow house, the width of a single room, with a street door opening onto a piazza or porch that runs along the side of the house. Wider lots allow for a Colonial Revival or Georgian style home, referred to colloquially as a double house, with a front door opening into a central interior hallway that bisects the house. Also prevalent is the “side hall” plan, borrowed from the popular design of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: a narrow house with the entrance leading into a hallway that runs front to back alongside three or four telescoping rooms. Many of these exhibit classic Victorian-style features such as bay windows, turrets, scalloped shingles and front porches. Like Daniel Island, the 243-acre I’On neighborhood established in 2008 in Mount Pleasant also boasts homes similar in design to those of downtown Charleston. Houses are built on narrow lots, and the streets throughout the neighborhood are narrow, too, ensuring slow speeds for vehicular traffic. Traditional 18th and 19th century features such as functional shutters, chimney caps, metal roofs, ironwork, keystones and dormers add to the charm. Rowhouses and a pastel color palette are other obvious connections as well as a stucco exterior on some homes, as seen in Charleston’s oldest neighborhoods in the French Quarter and South of Broad areas. In the decades since I’On and Daniel Island were developed, countless other suburban neighborhoods have sprung up with their own take on Charlestonthemed architectural design. The West Ashley communities of Carolina Bay, Estes Park and The Settlement at Ashley Hall Plantation are but a few. Mimicking another Charleston tradition, some modern suburban neighborhoods even host periodic tours of privately-owned homes. The custom began downtown in the 1940s when the Historic Charleston Foundation began its Tours of Homes and Gardens in the springtime to showcase centuries-old homes to visitors who had come to see a place that time appeared to have forgotten. This year the event, now known as the Charleston Festival, will hold its Annual House and Garden Tours March 14 – April 14. The HCF also sponsors occasional tours of historic private homes outside the city. In 2024, the Art and Architecture Tour on February 14 will offer three on Edisto Island: the ruins of the 1725 Brick House, which burned in 1929; the Crawford Plantation, built in 1834 exemplifying the Greek Revival elements of columns and a portico; and the simpler wood-frame Hutchinson House, built in 1885 by emancipated African Americans. The Hutchinsons were successful farmers, and their descendants lived in the house until the 1980s. The Edisto Island Open Land Trust purchased the property in 2016 and is in the process of stabilizing and restoring the house which will eventually be open to the public. The tour in February offers an exciting sneak peek. Feature A Carolina Bay modern single house
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