Lace House

National Register Listing

Street Address:

803 Richland St., Columbia, SC (Richland County)

Alternate Name:

Robertson House

---

NRHP Nomination

Record Number:

S10817740002

Description and Narrative:

(Robertson House) The Lace House has its historic significance as part of the buildings that make up Columbia’s Arsenal Hill, a complex of fine mansions which were built shortly before the Civil War, and which furnished residences for the succeeding political and social elite of South Carolina’s capital city through the early 1900s. The Lace House itself was at one time the home of a United States senator and at another of a mayor of Columbia. The house was built on the southwest corner of the square in 1854 by a respected Columbia banker, John C. Caldwell, as a wedding present for his youngest daughter, Mary and her husband, Thomas J. Robertson. Said to have been designed by a French architect who at the time was designing homes in New Orleans, the Lace House features ornamental cornices and friezes, parquet floors and figured glass doors and windows. It is a double-porched Classical Revival mansion with Italianate details that has an English basement, bracketed cornices, arched doors, and ornate cast iron porch supports, railings and trim. The lace-like appearance of all the lavish ironwork gives the house its popular name. Listed in the National Register December 17, 1969.

Period of Significance:

1854

Level of Significance:

State

Area of Significance:

Architecture;Archeology: Historic - Aboriginal;Politics/Government;Social History

National Register Determination:

listed

Date of Certification:

December 17 1969

---