This open-air porch often runs the length of a home and has multiple doorways leading indoors. Originally designed to beat the South Carolina heat by capturing the cool cross breezes from the water, piazzas are now integral parts of the city's lifestyle.
The Holy City still uses the 17th-century term “piazza”—which comes from the Italian word meaning “open space”—instead of the more common “porch” or “veranda.” The unique verbage seems rather appropriate when you consider that the Charleston single house piazza is a distinctive example of vernacular architecture—design ...
Most single houses have large porches known in Charleston as “piazzas.” These stretch the length of the house and are held up by columns, often ornately carved.
What Are the Porch Doors For? The hospitality doors were helpful social cues for neighbors and friends. If the porch door was propped open, it meant that the family inside was ready for visitors, and people were welcome to come in. If the door was shut—you guessed it—do not disturb.
Southern houses and porches - the two pair up as perfectly as peanut butter and bananas. Sometimes referred to as a piazza or veranda, a porch can transform an ordinary house into a warm, inviting - and sometimes stunning - home.
Veranda, gallery, portico
Porches, not just sleeping porches, are a big deal in the South. A veranda is technically a more enclosed porch with railing, and may wrap around the house. (Of course, Southerners are also fond of wrap-around porches, or at least wistfully talking about wanting one.)
The Charleston Single House
The home-type was adapted from English row houses and they typically boast an open living room, at least two bedrooms, and stand two stories tall. The shape of the lot is narrow and long. Nearly every Charleston single house features a distinct piazza with an entrance facing the street.
First, much of the peninsula is made of artificial fill – when a portion of unstable land, for instance, a marsh, is filled in with dirt or other excess material to make the area possible to build on. This causes problems because the ground takes a long time to settle and become compact.
After the Civil War, this area of Charleston devolved into near slum conditions. In the early 1900s, Dorothy Porcher Legge purchased a section of these houses numbering 99 through 101 East Bay and began to renovate them. She chose to paint these houses pink based on a colonial Caribbean color scheme.
A single house has its narrow side (often two- or three-bays wide) with a gable end along the street and a longer side (often five-bays) running perpendicular to the street. The house is well-suited to long, narrow lots which were laid out in early Charleston.
According to the Gullah/Geechee, a blue porch ceiling brought good luck to the home and helped to ward away evil spirits as these lost souls are unable to cross water. A haint blue porch ceiling resembles water and prevents haints from harming the people in the house.
The coloring of the houses helped keep the houses cool inside as well as give the area its name. By 1945, most of the houses had been restored. Common myths concerning Charleston include variants on the reasons for the paint colors.
A Farmer's porches are always in style. Sometimes it is simply called a front porch, but a wide and narrow front porch extending across all or most of the home has traditionally been called a farmer's porch.
Have you ever noticed that porches in Charleston usually have a light blue paint upon their ceilings? The Gullah Geechee descendants of the enslaved African planters thought that soft, blue-green paint would keep the “haints,” or evil spirits, away.
Because of its tolerance for religious freedom, which wasn't the norm back then, Charleston is called The Holy City. The city was named after King Charles II and was founded as Charles Town. Chuck is a nickname for someone named Charles, so Chucktown or Chuck Town is Charleston's more casual nickname.
The term lanai denotes a type of patio most famously found in Florida homes.
A report on homelessness across the state shows an 18 percent increase in that population in recent years. CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - A report on homelessness across the state shows an 18 percent increase in that population in recent years.
Charleston County Courthouse (1790–92) is a Neoclassical building in Charleston, South Carolina, designed by Irish architect James Hoban. It was a likely model for Hoban's most famous building, the White House, and both buildings are modeled after Leinster House, the current seat of the Irish Parliament in Dublin.
This small building facing the cobblestones of Chalmers Street in historic Charleston is commonly referred to as the Pink House. Built around 1712, it is believed to be the oldest remaining structure in the city.
Being that this is the Lowcountry, the water table is high. Because of this, there are no basements in homes in the area. Homes built in areas which are in flood zones per FEMA maps are required to be elevated.
The zoning requirements of Charleston discourage tall buildings, and folklore states that no building can be taller than the tallest church steeple, which is that of St. Matthew's Lutheran Church.
Along one stretch of the South Carolina coast, from Charleston and farther points south, the land is sinking—or subsiding—primarily because of natural geological pressures on the region's continental shelf. The subsidence rate is about five inches per century at the water-level gauge in Charleston Harbor.
A long, narrow shape
Charleston was originally divided into long, narrow lots, so homebuilders had to build long, narrow structures.