Oak Island
National Register Listing
Street Address:
1 mi. off Oak Island Rd. on Westbank Creek (Charleston County)
Alternate Name:
William Seabrook, Jr. House
NRHP Nomination
Record Number:
S10817710143
Description and Narrative:
(William Seabrook, Jr. House) Oak Island, built ca. 1828-31 by William Seabrook, Jr., is significant architecturally and agriculturally as a remaining example of the large antebellum plantation houses on Edisto Island associated with the wealth attained through the production of sea island cotton. Oak Island is a two-and-one-half story, rectangular plan (with projecting two- story rear pavilion), central-hall, frame, weatherboard-clad residence. The gable-end roof is pierced at the rear slope by two, massive, interior chimneys with heavily corbelled caps and necking. The front roof slope has three, symmetrically-placed, gabled dormers. A one-story, six bay, hipped roof porch extends fully across the façade and wraps around the right elevation another five bays. Plain wooden columns support the porch roof; there is a plain balustrade between the columns. The gable ends are pedimented with a flushboard tympanum and two, quarter round windows with fixed shutters. The house was named for the grove of trees around it. The lawns encircling the house in the antebellum period occupied acres, which camellias of every then known species, 1,500 varieties of roses, an apiary and a fish pond in the middle of which there was a latticed house covered with roses. This park-like environment was in 1860, the year of William Seabrook, Jr.’s death, at the center of a 405-acre plantation, on which there belonged 174 slaves. There are no remaining outbuildings or garden buildings extant. Listed in the National Register November 28, 1986.
Period of Significance:
1830;circa 1828 – 1831;1860
Level of Significance:
Local
Area of Significance:
Architecture;Agriculture
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
November 28 1986
