Branford-Horry House, Georgian residence at Meeting Street, Charleston, United States.
Branford-Horry House is a three-story brick townhouse on Meeting Street featuring extensive cypress wood paneling and intricately carved mahogany fireplace surrounds. The residence has a two-story covered porch structure that extends over the public sidewalk.
The house was built after 1751, when William Branford married Elizabeth Savage, who had inherited the corner parcel from her uncle Benjamin Savage. In 1801 it passed to Ann Branford and her husband Thomas Horry. Elias Horry, a grandson of Branford and mayor of Charleston from 1815 to 1817, added the front piazza over the sidewalk around 1830. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
The second-floor rooms display carved woodwork that shows how wealthy families decorated their homes with fine craftsmanship. This attention to detail reflects how important artistic interiors were to people of means in colonial Charleston.
The house is a private residence at 59 Meeting Street and is not open to the public, so it is seen from the street. The two-story piazza with five columns and a pediment hangs over the public sidewalk, so pedestrians pass directly beneath it. Interior and exterior preservation easements held by the Preservation Society of Charleston limit changes to the building.
A vehicle accident in 1988 damaged the house and destroyed two columns of the front porch, leaving visible marks on its structure. This incident and the repairs that followed became part of the building's more recent story.
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