20 Montagu Street (Cobia-Moultrie House)

Archive

-

Historic Charleston Foundation

20 Montagu Street: Origsize: 4x6; Origformat: Print-Photographic
20 Montagu Street

Origsize: 4x6; Origformat: Print-Photographic

Name/Title

20 Montagu Street (Cobia-Moultrie House)

Entry/Object ID

MONTAGU.020.1

Scope and Content

Constructed ca. 1808. This 3½ story brick house on a high foundation with a molded brick water table represents the apogee of the Neoclassical Charleston single house in Harleston Village. Built at the same time as the Nathaniel Russell House at 51 Meeting Street, the dwelling at 20 Montagu features the same finely crafted brickwork laid in Flemish bond with rubbed brick jack arches over the windows, semicircular stair-hall windows on the east elevation, marble window sills, and a dentiled brick cornice. The double-tiered piazzas, with arcades supported by slender Tuscan columns and screened by a notable door architrave with Ionic pilasters and a rectangular fanlight, survive as the most distinctive Neoclassical version of this tradition in the boroughs of Charleston. Daniel Cobia built this house by 1809 and lived here with his mother, Christiana Cobia, a planter in her own right. After Cobia's death in the 1820s, the house passed to Dr. James Moultrie Jr., cousin of Gen. William Moultrie, leader of the movement to found a medical college in South Carolina and eventually professor of physiology. Moultrie's executors sold the property in 1879 to Mary Frazier Davie McCrady, daughter of a North Carolina governor and wife of Confederate Gen. Edward McCrady. The McCradys lived here for nearly 12 years. Here the general, an attorney and historian, completed much of his 4-volume history of South Carolina. File contains FOHG house history (undated, maybe 1970s?); other brief house history (unattributed, undated); newspaper article (DYKYC, date not indicated); handwritten staff research "source notes" (scant).

Collection

Historic Charleston Foundation Property Records

Acquisition

Accession

MONTAGU.020.

Source or Donor

20 Montagu Street (Cobia-Moultrie House)

Acquisition Method

Collected by Staff

Lexicon

Search Terms

Montagu Street, Harleston Village, Historic buildings--South Carolina--Charleston

Legacy Lexicon

Object Name

Property File

Archive Details

Archive Size/Extent

1 File Folder (9 p.)

Archive Notes

Finding Aids: Index to Property Files Level of Description: Folder

Location

Location

Shelf

Property File Shelves

Room

Margaretta P. Childs Archives

Building

Missroon House

Category

Permanent

Date

February 7, 2023

Location

Container

PF Box 76

Shelf

Prop File Shelves, Property File Shelves

Room

Margaretta P. Childs Archives

Building

Missroon House

Category

Permanent

Relationships

Related Entries

Notes

2006.010.379-383, 2011.015.102a-c, MONTAGU.020.2a-b

Related Publications

Notes

Buildings of Charleston (see Abstract), pg. 531-532

Created By

admin@catalogit.app

Create Date

October 6, 2010

Updated By

admin@catalogit.app

Update Date

February 17, 2023