William Enston Home, 900 King Street, Charleston, Charleston County, SC

Significance: The William Enston Home consists of twenty-nine structures on 12.1 landscaped acres. Buildings include the twenty-four residential cottages (HABS SC-686-A and SC-686-B), Memorial Hall (SC-686-C), Infirmary (Superintendent's House, SC-686-D), Water Tower (SC-686-E), Entrance Gate (SC-686-F), and Engine House (SC-686-G). All buildings (excepting the stone Entrance Gate) are of red brick, and all (excepting the Richardsonian Romanesque Gate and the bungalow-style Infirmary) feature a mixture of Romanesque and Queen Anne-style elements. The William Enston Home is an early example of benevolent, philanthropic housing for the elderly. Funded by a bequest of 1859, the complex was built between 1884 and 1888, with additional structures put up in 1893, 1927, and 1933. With neat rows of detached, double cottages set amid spacious, landscaped grounds, the Home provides an unusual and well-preserved example of nineteenth-century picturesque, suburban planning concepts adapted to this type of institutional function. On the local level, the Romanesque Revival is rare in Charleston, a cityscape dominated by its ante-bellum past, and the Enston Home provides on of the pre-eminent examples.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N241
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N728
Survey number: HABS SC-686
Building/structure dates: 1888 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1920 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1931 Subsequent Work
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 96000493