Borough House Plantation
National Register Listing
Street Address:
Rt. 261, 0.8 mi. N of intersection of Rt. 261 and SC 76/378, Stateburg, SC (Sumter County)
Alternate Name:
Anderson House
NRHP Nomination
Record Number:
S10817743001
Description and Narrative:
(Anderson House) Built ca. 1758, the Borough House, Stateburg’s oldest extant building, is significant architecturally because it and its dependencies form the largest complex in the United States of pise de terre (rammed earth) buildings. This material, a Spanish and French type of construction, is essentially hand-poured clay. The Classical Revival home’s beams are of heart pine, some 50 feet long, adze-hewn and pegged. The laths on the inside of the pise de terre walls are hand-hewn and secured with three-inch hand-forged square-topped nails. The base coat of plaster is over laths mixed with binding of rabbit fur. In 1821 the present pise de terre wings were added, in addition to the colonnaded one-story back porch with two bedrooms above and the second-story porch on the front. Pise de terre outbuildings include a two-roomed library with hipped roof and Tuscan colonnade on all four sides, a dry well, a doctor’s office with a temple front with four columns, a loom house, a summer kitchen/dairy, and a slave cabin/cook’s quarters. According to tradition, the Borough House served as headquarters for General Cornwallis in 1780 while he established a series of forts in the Wateree Valley. General Nathanael Greene and some Continental Army soldiers occupied the house in 1781. Dr. William W. Anderson, who redesigned the house in 1821, performed the first successful operation for removal of cancer of the jawbone here in 1829. On its grounds the state’s first tree farm was established in the early 1900s. Listed in the National Register March 23, 1972; Designated a National Historic Landmark June 7, 1988.
Period of Significance:
1758;1821
Level of Significance:
National
Area of Significance:
Military;Architecture
National Register Determination:
National Historic Landmark
Date of Certification:
March 23 1972
Date of Certification as a National Historic Landmark:
June 7 1988
