Calhoun Mansion, Charleston, SC 9-22

The Calhoun Mansion was built in 1876 by a wealthy merchant. He spent $200,000 at the time and that was a huge amount of money then. The builder used a lot of things in his design that denoted wealth like the use of stone and brick. The rope motif around everything was the sign of a wealthy shipping merchant. It has 35 fireplaces, the wealthier you were the more fireplaces you put in to show off your wealth too. As I said in my earlier post it is 24,000 square feet, which makes it the largest house in historic Charleston.

It was due to be condemned in 1976 when a lawyer bought it for $200,000. A hundred years later he paid exactly what it had cost to build it. He lived in it while restoring it over 15 years to the tune of 5 million dollars. He decided to sell it and the present owner has owned it for three and a half years and lives in it.

The house and grounds are gorgeous and the history was interesting, but the fee was steep and you saw very little of the house. The reason for that supposedly was because the other rooms were being lived in, be that as it may, we felt kind of ripped off when we discovered how quickly the tour was finished.

The rooms we were allowed to peek in were packed with the current owners collections of stuff. I’ve said it before, just because people have tons of money, it doesn’t mean they have good taste!

I still enjoyed what I did see of the craftsmanship that went into the building of the house and the gardens were meticulously maintained and some of the treasures inside were beautiful.

I highly recommend Googling for reviews of things. It has helped us immensely, when we remember to do it!