Georgian Houses of the Far South 
ANCRUM HOUSE, CHART,ESTON, BUILT IN l8lO 
columns did not appear until just before the 
civil war. The interior finish of Greek tem¬ 
ple houses of the Far South is extremely 
simple. This is not surprising in view of 
the fact that building, at the time these 
houses were erected, was done entirely by 
slaves, who, though fairly good workmen, 
were in no sense capable of what is known 
as “ skilled labor.” Furthermore, unlike his 
Northern brother, the victim of a severe cli¬ 
mate, the Southerner has never made an altar 
of his fireplace, but rather of his veranda. 
d'he entrance to Phoenix Hall, simple 
but dignified, is a fair specimen of the de¬ 
tail employed in connection with Southern 
homes of this period. The rooms within 
contain mantelpieces remarkably simple and 
well designed. The hall and dining-room 
are panelled. The low cabinet doors are of 
mahogany with glass knobs—a style which 
is enjoying a revival at present. The Pope- 
Barrow house and Phoenix Hall are to be 
found repeated in various forms all through 
the coast region of South Carolina and 
Georgia, and westward through the cotton 
belt where Southern life was, and still is, 
most typical. 'The various and effective 
uses to which white columns may be put, as 
illustrated in the work of the Far South, is 
of itself an interesting study, and demon¬ 
strates the ingenuity man employs when 
given an idea and an opportunity to express 
it. In time, white columns became so gen¬ 
eral that every carpenter “shack” erected 
for immediate use had a portico supported 
by them ; every one-storey cottage was a 
parallelogram surrounded by a colonnade. 
Students ot Georgian work do not easily 
find satisfactory examples of it farther south 
than South Carolina, Beaufort and the adja¬ 
cent sea islands. In Savannah are a few 
specimens, it is true, but on the whole the 
paucity of good work there is surprising 
in view of the fact that the city was founded 
as early as 1733. In addition to the Bulloch 
house previously referred to, the best ex¬ 
ample is Scarborough house situated in 
Yamacraw. This reallv excellent old place, 
though now greatly changed by time, was 
once one of the show houses of the city. It 
was built by Jay, the designer of the Bul¬ 
loch house, about 1815. The arrangement 
of rooms is interesting. To the rear of the 
entrance hall is a ballroom opening into a 
longer chamber—a banquet hall. It is sig¬ 
nificant ol the highly social character of 
early life in the South that so many of the 
old houses, even those found in what has 
become almost a trackless wilderness—in the 
Santee region, for instance—contain ball¬ 
rooms and banquet halls. Most of the old 
houses of Savannah are built of “ tabby ” 
SEIGLING HOUSE, EAST BATTERY, CHARLESTON 
266 
