Photo of the Week: Edmonston-Alston House in Charleston, South Carolina

From this piazza at the Edmonston-Alston House in Charleston, South Carolina, Gen. P.T. Beauregard and his comrades watched as the Civil War got its start with blasts from Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Charles Alston, a member of a prominent Low Country rice-planting dynasty, had purchased the house after its original owner, Charles Edmonston, was forced to sell it as the economy tanked during the panic of 1837. Alston added Greek Revival architecture to the house, leading to the creation of the third-story piazza with Corinthian columns, a cast-iron balcony across the front and a rooftop railing bearing the Alston family coat of arms.

The mansion, the only one of Charleston’s fine house museums offering a jaw-dropping panorama of the harbor, has been in the Alston family since 1838. When it was built in 1825 in the federal style by Edmonston, a shipping merchant, it became one of the first grand homes to be built alongside the sea wall and away from chaos at the wharves and warehouses higher on the peninsula.

Today travelers to Charleston can tour the house and enjoy its sweeping water vistas while admiring Greek Revival interiors and a compelling collection of 19th century Alston family heirlooms.

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Piazza at Edmondston-Alston House photo courtesy of the Charleston Heritage Federation.