Name/Title
87 Church Street (Heyward-Washington House)Entry/Object ID
CHURCH.087.1Scope and Content
Outbuildings constructed ca. 1740; house constructed ca. 1771; altered late-19th century; restored 1929-30 and subsequent dates. This property was granted to Joseph Ellicott in 1694. A subsequent owner, a well-to-do gunsmith, built a 2-story brick single house here in about 1740. Rice planter Col. Daniel Heyward purchased the site in 1770, and his son, Thomas, began construction on the present house in 1771. Heyward razed the previous single house yet kept the former 2-story kitchen and 1-story stable dependencies that still exist in the rear courtyard. The Heyward dwelling stands as a well-developed example of a brick double house with a central hall and 2 rooms on each side. On the 2nd floor a large front drawing room and smaller withdrawing room extend across the front elevation, the former retaining its original paneled woodwork. On the exterior brick jack arches over the windows and the conjectural doorway provide the only decoration to a facade that supports a low hipped roof with a single front dormer. Thomas Heyward, using this as his Charleston townhouse, became a signer of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. After the fall of Charleston, the British imprisoned Heyward and his brother-in-law George Abbot Hall in St. Augustine. Tradition holds that their wives stayed on in the house. When the women refused a British order to illuminate their windows, a mob stormed the house, which led to a miscarriage by Mrs. Hall and her ensuing death. Residing more often on his plantations after the war, Heyward rented the house to the city for the lodging of President George Washington during his week-long stay in Charleston in 1791. Washington wrote of his visit in his diary, "The lodging provided for me in this place, was very good, being the furnished house of a gentleman at present in the country." Selling the house 3 years later, Heyward bought another townhouse down the street. By the late-19th century the residence became a bakery on the ground floor and the owner installed a storefront on the southern half of the front elevation while lowering the windows and installing a door on the three southernmost bays. The Charleston Museum purchased the property in 1929 with assistance from the Society for the Preservation of Old Dwellings, although this transaction was not completed until the 1950s with some help from the Society and from Historic Charleston Foundation. The architectural firm of Simons and Lapham carried forth a splendid investigation of the altered first floor, discovering the layout of the narrow front hall and finding lost mantels in the fowl house in the back. After restoration of the front door architrave and 1st floor rooms, the building opened as the first historic house museum in Charleston. Garden precedents from the third quarter of the 18th century were followed in the creation of a parterre, planted only with flowers and shrubs known in the city in 1791. (Poston, Buildings of Charleston.)
File contains National Register Nomination Form; "Preliminary Report on the Research at the Heyward-Washington House (Herold, Charleston Museum, undated); house history from Architectural Guide to Charleston; historical/chain-of-title research notes (HCF, undated); house history by SGS (Samuel Gaillard Stoney?); other miscellaneous house histories; Charleston Museum articles "A New Perspective on the Museum's Historic Houses," The Dining Experience of 18th Century Expansion," and "Researching and Rethinking the Houses"; news articles (including 1979 DYKYC); architectural analysis (Chappell, 1985); measured drawing (undated, unattributed); scale drawings of interior details (Graham, 1985); "exterior assessment/maintenance inspection report (2008); "Kitchen/Laundry Building Paint Analysis (2000); early Charleston Museum tour pamphlet.Collection
Historic Charleston Foundation Property RecordsAcquisition
Accession
CHURCH.087.Source or Donor
87 Church Street (Heyward-Washington House)Acquisition Method
Collected by StaffLexicon
Search Terms
Church Street, National Register of Historic Places, Heyward Washington House (Charleston, S.C.), Historic buildings--South Carolina--CharlestonArchive Details
Archive Size/Extent
1 File FolderArchive Notes
Finding Aids: Index to Property Files
Level of Description: FolderLocation
Location
Shelf
Property File ShelvesRoom
Margaretta P. Childs ArchivesBuilding
Missroon HouseCategory
PermanentDate
February 7, 2023Location
Container
PF Box 26Shelf
Prop File Shelves, Property File ShelvesRoom
Margaretta P. Childs ArchivesBuilding
Missroon HouseCategory
PermanentRelationships
Related Entries
Notes
2018.002.016, CHURCH.087.10, CHURCH.087.11, CHURCH.087.12a-b, CHURCH.087.13, CHURCH.087.2, CHURCH.087.3, CHURCH.087.4, CHURCH.087.5, CHURCH.087.6, CHURCH.087.7a-b, CHURCH.087.8, CHURCH.087.9a-bRelated Publications
Notes
Buildings of Charleston (see Abstract), pg. 77-79General Notes
Note
Notes: Note: house also belonged to John Faucheraud Grimke and family from ca. 1794-1825. A Mr. Grimke purchased the house in 1794 (see Nat'l Register Nomination form) and in 1825, ten Grimke siblings (the children of John Faucheraud Grimke and Mary Smith Grimke) sold the house to Margaret Munro (Charleston County records, Direct Index, 1800-1888, Gad-Gyl, Part 2, pp. 463-65).
Re: dates of ownership/occupancy of John F. Grimke and family. From Louise W. Knight, author and historian (www.louisewknight.com), received by email 5/28/2015: "I have learned the date when the Grimkes sold the Heyward-Washington House. Although they moved out in 1802 or early 1803, the house stayed in the family until 1825, when the children sold it. They owned it from 1794 until then, making them owners of the house longer than Mr. Heyward."Created By
admin@catalogit.appCreate Date
January 16, 2007Updated By
admin@catalogit.appUpdate Date
February 17, 2023