Nathaniel Russell House

South bay of the house

Russell commissioned an unknown architect to build a large townhouse in the then fashionable Federal-style. Sited on a large lot in downtown Charleston, the house is rectangular in plan, three stories tall, and faced in gray Carolina brick. A bracketed cornice and paneled balustrade separate the walls from the low hip roof, concealing it from view to better express the pure geometrical shapes of the house.

The more important facades — the entrance facade (facing east) and the garden facade (facing south) are treated formally and arranged symmetrically. The windows of the second, most important story, the “bel etage,” are the tallest; all eleven are capped with marble voussoirs and set into niches with red brick arches. The whole ensemble is connected by a continuous stone string course, creating a kind of architectural necklace running around the east and south sides of the house.

The principal feature of the entrance facade is the single leaf, faux-grained, eight-paneled entrance door, capped by an elliptical fanlite, and flanked by four fluted pilasters. On the floor above, an elegant iron balcony with bowed, elliptical projections bearing the monogram “NR”, spans the full three-bay width of the facade.

The principal feature of the south side is the polygonal bay rising the full height of the house. A second balcony, as light and elegant as the first (but lacking the monograms), wraps around the bay, emphasizing the preeminence of the second story.

An elaborate tripartite window dominates the north facade, seemingly random in location, but carefully placed to sit indoors between landings of the house's elliptical staircase.[10]

The house is 9,600 square feet (890 m²)[11] with 6,000 square feet (560 m²) of living area.

Elliptical spiral staircase, which ascends three floors

The interior of the Nathaniel Russell house is an exemplar of the neoclassical style (often called Federal style in the United States; late-Georgian or Adam style in Great Britain; and Louis Seize in France), popular during the last two decades of the 18th century and the first two of the 19th. In their interior design, neoclassical architects and craftsmen often created rooms in a variety of geometrical shapes (square, circular, ovoid, elliptical), embellished with elaborate plaster decoration and striking polychrome. The Nathaniel Russell house features three main rooms per floor, each of different geometric designs: a rectangular room in front; a central oval room, and a square room in the rear.[5]

The rectangular entrance hall with a black and white diamond patterned floorcloth edged with a leaf motif, and the adjacent office was where Russell conducted business. Separating the public rooms at the front of the house from the more private rooms used by the family, wide faux-grained double doors with glazed rosette patterned insets and an elliptical fan shaped transom, gives access to the golden walled stair hall that showcases the most important architectural feature of the house, the cantilevered spiral staircase, that ascends to the third floor. The asymmetrical hall is illuminated by a Palladian window, and further ornamented with trompe-l'œil painting resembling a plaster cornice and an elliptical medallion that were painted by Charleston artisan Samuel O'Hara. Off the central stair hall is the oval dining room, with turquoise walls that appear painted, but are small squares of unpatterned wallpaper bordered with interlocking rings, in red and gold, above cypress wainscoting painted white.[10] The heart-pine floors and the wood interior shutters are original. At the rear of the house is a square parlor, that was enlarged at a later date to connect the house with the kitchen, and was used by the family for everyday dining.

The second-floor oval drawing room, to which the women of the house retired after dinner, is the most decorated room in the house. Papered in apricot, its elaborate plaster moldings are embellished with 24-karat gold leaf. Plinth blocks at the base are painted to resemble lapis lazuli. The Adam-style ornamentation of the fireplace mantles are among the most detailed in the city.[12] The curved entry doors are faux-grained to resemble flame-grained mahogany on the exterior and tortoise shell on the interior. Curved mullioned mirrors on one side of the room balance the windows on the other and reflect light into the room.[10]

The large rectangular withdrawing room at the front of the house has soft gray walls and white wainscoting topped by a multilayered gilded cornice. The windows are surrounded by tall slender pilasters and overhanging entablatures that give character to the walls. With windows on three sides, the room was used primarily during the day to take advantage of the daylight and breezes. At the rear of the house is a square shaped master bedroom, and additional bedrooms are found on the third floor.[10] Though most of the art and furniture displayed in the house is not original to the Nathaniel Russell House, they are from the period when the Russell family inhabited the house, and many are of Charleston origin.

Nathaniel Russell House Slave Quarters

The house and grounds are separated from the street by a wrought iron fence set atop a low brick wall, with an iron entrance gate flanked by tall brick piers capped with limestone ball finials. To the south of the house is the garden that was originally laid out in a geometric arrangement with patterned beds of flowers, ornamental shrubs and large orange and grapefruit trees.[13] Today a formal English garden can be found with gravel paths, boxwood hedges and plants favored in the 19th century. In the rear of the house is the two-story slave quarters that housed many of the estimated 18 slaves that were at the Nathaniel Russell House.