A ruin became a rehearsal for the White House

Fire reduces the old statehouse to foundations

Fire tore through the South Carolina Statehouse in 1788. It stood right where the courthouse stands now, on Court House Square (Charleston). The statehouse had served the colony since 1753. After the fire, nothing was left but foundations and scorched brick.

The lot sat ruined for two years. Then the state hired James Hoban, an architect who had trained in Dublin, to build a new courthouse on the same spot. He didn't clear the site and start fresh. He built into what was left. He raised his new building over the old one's bones.

An Irish architect rebuilds, then designs the White House

Hoban finished the Charleston County Courthouse in 1792. It borrowed its lines from Leinster House, the Irish Parliament building in Dublin. Hoban knew this building well from home.

In May 1791, President George Washington came through Charleston on his Southern Tour. He may have met Hoban here in front of the new courthouse. The following month, Washington summoned Hoban north to Philadelphia, then the national capital.

That July, Hoban entered a competition to design the President's House in the new capital city. He won it using the same ideas he'd just finished testing on Broad Street. He adjusted the plan under Washington's direction, but the bones stayed his. The building burned by the British in 1814 and rebuilt is the same one standing in Washington today.

The courthouse itself was renovated in 1883 and 1884, and it still holds court. You're standing on the spot where a statehouse burned. A courthouse rose from the ashes here. A young architect worked out the building he'd carry to the White House. He did it in brick and stone.

Forty-nine convicted pirates hang at this crossroads

Before Hoban ever laid brick here, this same intersection was a place to watch people die. At least forty-nine men convicted as pirates were condemned in trials that November. The colony hanged them at this crossroads. It was meant as a public lesson. Everyone crossing Broad and Meeting would see it. The courthouse that stands here now inherited a corner that had already been used to make an example out of ruin.

Charleston hears the Declaration read from this square

Charlestonians gathered at this same square to hear the Declaration of Independence read aloud. The reading came from a second-floor porch facing Meeting Street. This was the government's usual place for announcing anything that mattered to the whole colony. Local tradition holds that this was the spot. The story is told more often than it is documented. Either way, this ground had a long habit of being where Charleston made its news public. This happened years before Hoban ever set a level on it.

A tornado strips the roof from Hoban's courthouse

A tornado tore across Charleston on August 25, 1885. It took the roof off Hoban's courthouse. Nearly a century after he'd built it over the statehouse's ashes, the building stood open to the sky again. He'd used it to test his ideas for the White House. The city rebuilt the roof. The state had rebuilt the walls after the 1788 fire in the same way. The courthouse absorbed the damage. It kept sitting court, the way it had absorbed the ruin before it.

A woman dies after an unsolved attack nearby

On November 1, 1933, a 64-year-old woman named Mary Ravenel was found gravely injured on Meeting Street. She was near Court House Square, close to her own home. She had been walking back from dinner when she was attacked. She died of her injuries. She told doctors only that a man had struck her.