Vanderhorst Mansion

What Makes It Worth Seeing

Few Charleston houses present the Greek Revival ideal so legibly from the street. Rising two and one-half storeys above a tall basement, the mansion spreads more than 6,000 square feet behind a piazza of six fluted Doric columns, with a double flight of curving stone steps—and graceful wrought-iron—sweeping up to a fanlight-framed entrance flanked by sidelights. A pediment with a crisp dogtooth cornice projects from the gable roof, and even the upper-floor doors keep their original fanlights, the kind of late-Federal detail that has largely stayed intact.↗↗↗

The house belongs to the city's architectural history as much as to one family: scholars of The Dwelling Houses of Charleston have long singled it out as a valuable example of the suburban villa tradition transplanted into an urban setting.↗↗

The Vanderhorst Story Behind the Bricks

The family name—pronounced "Vandrost" in Charleston, locals will tell you—goes back to Baron Johannes van Der Horst, a Dutch officer who crossed to England with William of Orange during the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and eventually settled in South Carolina. His descendants became planter aristocrats, and one of them, Arnoldus Vanderhorst II, fought in the Revolutionary militia, served as Mayor of Charleston, and was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1794. When George Washington spent a week in the city on his Southern Tour, it was Arnoldus who hosted a stag dinner for the president at McCrady's Tavern.↗↗

The family's great seat was the Kiawah Island plantation, where the Vanderhorst house still stands. Elias Vanderhorst, who purchased the Chapel Street plot in 1832, ran the townhouse side of that empire—along with homes on Edisto Island and Sullivan's Island—before the Civil War eroded the fortune. Through it all, 28 Chapel Street stayed in the family until 1915, when the widow Adele Allston Vanderhorst died.↗↗

From Family Home to Restored Landmark

Sold for just $6,000 in 1928 to Dr. Ripon Wilson, the mansion was carved into apartments, a fate that spared it the wrecking ball as the surrounding neighborhood declined. By the early 1980s it had grown disheveled with age. In 1983 the City of Charleston's preservation commission approved low-interest redevelopment loans to restore 28 Chapel and the houses on either side, and the work was completed within the year. A further rehabilitation in 1990 returned it toward its original character as a private residence.↗↗

How to Visit

Because this is a private home and not a museum, the best way to experience it is a slow walk down Chapel Street in the Wraggborough district, taking in the columns, the staircase and the pediment from the public sidewalk. The house also carries a historic marker placed by the Preservation Society of Charleston, so you can pause and read the family's compressed biography before moving on. Pair the stop with a wander through the surrounding antebellum streetscapes, where several other period townhouses survive.↗↗