Jonathan Lucas House

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Description:

Black and white photograph of the first floor hall looking north to the stairhall in the Jonathan Lucas House located at 286 Calhoun Street.

Jonathan Lucas Jr. built this house sometime between 1803 when he acquired the land and 1809 when it is listed in the Charleston City Directory. Designed in the Adamesque style, it was constructed with three stories on top of a high basement, an ornate main entrance with an elliptical fanlight and an interior containing an abundace of Adamesque decorations still present today. Edward S. Lucas inherited the house along with the surrounding property and sold it to David Jennings in 1867 who in turn, sold it to the City of Charleston twenty years later. The City then built the City Hospital at the corner of Calhoun and Lucas (now Barre) Streets between 1887 and 1888 incorporating the former Lucas residence as the Riverside Infirmary in 1893. When the new Roper Hospital replaced the City Hospital in 1904 and the Thompson Memorial Hospital was built in 1921 to house the Riverside Infirmary, the Lucas House became the R.A. Kinloch Home for Nurses. The top floor was rebuilt in 1959-60 following a fire. Today the grand home is owned by the South Carolina Medical Society.

Photographer Charles N. Bayless, funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, photographed and recorded the Carolina Lowcountry between 1970 and 1988. The South Carolina Project took place between 1977 and 1979.