Distinctive architecture varies by region across our country, often defining and being defined by the local culture. Cape Cods in New England. Brownstones in Manhattan. Row houses in Baltimore. In the Midwest, mid-century modern houses predominate with echoes of Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1950s streamlined hallmark designs. Arizona and New Mexico are home to pueblo revival or Santa Fe-style homes. Spanish-influences prevail in California and Florida with an abundance of clay tile roofs and stucco exteriors.
The Lowcountry, lauded for its rich architectural history and distinctive home, is best known for the Charleston single house. (Read our article on Charleston single’s for the particulars.) What makes Lowcountry homes distinctive to new Charleston area residents is most often the porches on these homes. Called piazzas, they run along the side of the house and provide a cool, airy place to sit in the heat of the summer and also serve to shade the side of the house oriented towards the sun.
As you immerse yourself in the Charleston community and culture, you’ll quickly pick up on the distinctive styles and their unique terminology. We’ve mentioned single houses and piazzas, but what other designs and features are common on homes here? As you go out shopping for your new home, these terms might sound odd at first, but you’ll quickly get the hang of these definitions & be sounding like a Charleston native in no time.
A glossary of Charleston-inspired home terms
Let’s start with what a Charleston- Single house. As you tour the streets of the historic Holy City, you might gave wondered why all of the homes seem sideways Charleston’s contribution to the
history of architecture is a form of house ideally suited for the heat and humidity and the colonial town’s narrow building lots. It is a common myth that homes were constructed this way because homeowners were taxed only on the frontage of the home and were hoping to dodge higher fees. In fact, it is a product of the aforementioned constrictive configuration of lots. A single room wide with high ceilings, these narrow houses are built on brick piers elevating them above grade and are sheltered by piazzas on the south or west. They are almost always three stories high on an elevated basement. Situated close to the street, they are placed right on the sidewalk. To enter a single house, you enter the piazza and then enter the door into the home’s central stairwell. The piazza entrance is referred to by some as a hospitality door, though this is not a valid term.
Charleston Single homes are designed to allow breezes to flow through the house without restriction since they are only a single room wide and 2 rooms deep. The high ceilings take advantage of the laws of physics, allowing hot air to rise, leaving the floors cooler. Windows opened in third floor rooms create convection, making these homes exceptionally well ventilated. Another unique feature of Charleston Single Homes is that they are generally do not have attics. Storage space is sometimes the grade level “basement” area under the home.
New construction homebuilders frequently pay homage to the Charleston-single with their more modern home designs and you’ll find adaptations of single houses from
Mount Pleasant to
Summerville.
And while we’re discussing Charleston-single’s, it’s worth noting that there’s more outdoor living available than just on the piazza. Let’s talk about a lanai, a living space that tip’s it’s hat to Hawaii. Simply defined, a lanai is a veranda, often a furnished one which is used as an outdoor living space. The word and room itself is Hawaiian. In the 1980s they became more familiar to residents of California and Florida. The word and room came to prominence on the television show Golden Girls. In a
very famous episode, Blanche bemoans her ex-husband’s sudden appearance and gets a riposte from guest star Sonny Bono to which she retorts, “Sonny Bono, ‘Get off my lanai!’” Despite their association with television comedy, lanais are now a common feature on Lowcountry homes. Often these outdoor rooms are formed by the three walls and a roof of the house with the fourth “wall” being open space to the yard. Like the piazza, lanais are both sheltered and open, private and social spaces to enjoy our subtropical climate.
Speaking of the subtropical climate, FROGs also bare mentioning. Nope, there are no actual frogs in this room, despite being named with this acronym. Short for “finished room over the garage” you find these bonus rooms in homes of all designs. In an online forum,
PalmettoGuy writes, “the “F” stands for “finished,” as opposed to an unfinished space used as an attic. Many home listings will count the FROG as a bedroom if it has a closet. Otherwise, it's usually listed as a bonus room.” According to Jim and Maria Hart, “In the early 1970s, builders in the Charleston area started dropping the ceiling in the garage to create space for a room — sometimes unfinished (UnFROG) and sometimes finished (FROG) in order to add value to their homes. The only access to this room was typically through the garage or laundry room. This room is unique to Charleston. No matter what you call them, bonus rooms and flex spaces are tops on the list of homebuyers.
These architectural distinctions we’ve mentioned are unique to the Lowcountry. And you might ask, what is the Charleston Lowcountry? The majority of the coastal plain of South Carolina lies at sea level. In the area of Charleston, there are numerous creeks and marshes contiguous with the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. During high tide, the waters of the ocean, rise into the creeks and marshes, where countless species of marine animals thrive. Marshes are home to Blue Crab, oysters, spot tail bass, and many more species. Only when you travel inland about 40 miles do you find modest hills. This part of the state of South Carolina is called “The Lowcountry”. Historically it was colonized permanently by the British in 1670, though there were preceding settlements here by both the French and the Spanish.
“Map showing the counties included in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton, and Jasper Counties, in dark red, are always included in the definition. Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester Counties, in lighter red, are often included; and Allendale, Georgetown, and Williamsburg Counties, in pink, are sometimes included.”
Wikipedia defines the Lowcountry as “a geographic and cultural region along South Carolina's coast, including the Sea Islands. ...the Lowcountry today is known for its historic cities and communities, natural environment, cultural heritage, and tourism industry.”
As the name suggests, the actual country is “low,” also meaning that the water table is high. Because of this, there are almost no basements in homes in the area unless they are elevated “grade level” basements as we mentioned above. Homes built in areas which are in
flood zones per FEMA maps are required to be elevated. These houses look like they are sitting on stilts. However, their elevation protects them from flooding as well as defining a sheltered space under the house where you can store things or place sitting areas. But in high risk flood zones, they may contain no grade level permanent, enclosed living space.
Special consideration is made in the architecture of homes at areas at higher risk of flooding. At the beach or in areas rated as high risk V Zones [Coastal flood with velocity hazard (wave action); no base flood elevations determined] elevated homes have
breakaway walls in the areas underneath the house per FEMA guidelines. Such walls are designed to give way in flood surges without damaging the house.
Realtors have said while helping buyers moving here from other areas of the United States and these buyers are concerned with the lack of basements. However, the reason is quite simple the lowcountry does not have basements because we are so close to sea level. The deeper you dig you hit water. The industry joke is that a basement here would be just an in-ground pool. To compensate for the lack of basements, homeowners frequently use their garages like attics or in the case of elevated homes, the area underneath the house but at grade.
In addition to Charleston-single style homes, Charleston also boasts many shotgun-style homes, aka the Charleston version of a “tiny home.” A shotgun style house is one which features an arrangement of rooms with either a side hall or no hall where the rooms are connected one to another. The old saying is that a shotgun fired through the front door would not hit a wall (because all rooms are open one to another.) Per
Wikipedia, “A ‘shotgun house’ is a narrow rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than about 12 feet wide, with rooms arranged one behind the other and doors at each end of the house. It was the most popular style of house in the Southern United States from the end of the American Civil War through the 1920s.”
There are numerous examples of shotgun style homes throughout historic Charleston. Many of the
freedman’s cottages built in the years after the Civil War were this style. Most of them are very small, small enough to qualify as tiny houses with generally less than 500 square feet. The Charleston “Freedman's Cottage”: An Architectural Tradition, By Lissa D'Aquisto Felzer, introduction notes, “Charleston's ‘freedman's cottages’ are some of the most understudied and undervalued vernacular buildings in the city, found as far south as Council Street and as far north as North Charleston.”
In her
survey of these homes, Felzer writes “‘Freedman's cottages’ are one-room wide, single-story dwellings with side piazzas and a gable roof. They are occasionally described by architectural historians as a subset of the Charleston single house.” She goes on to say that not always resided in by freed slaves, they were built and owned by and for all ethnicities of people and are just as frequently called Charleston cottages.
With your newly perfected understanding of Charleston’s unique architectural influences, you will be able to amaze your Realtor with your knowledge and information of the Lowcountry lexicon as you sail through your new house hunt.
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