Take a Photo Tour of Charleston's Drayton Hall
Established in 1738, Drayton Hall is an icon of colonial America architecture and identity and a National Trust Historic Site. The main house remains in nearly original condition after seven generations of family ownership, the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and devastating hurricanes and earthquakes. The main house was never modernized with electric lighting, plumbing, or central heating or air conditioning and is unfurnished, allowing the beauty of its architectural details to become the focus for visitors. Surrounded by ancient live oaks and bordered by the historic Ashley River, the entire site—including the historic grounds with its broad vistas, vanished structures, and rare period features—serves as a testimony to American history.
You can visit Drayton Hall and enjoy its wide selection of guided house tours and programs, including the annual Distinguished Speakers Series. But before you plan out your next trip, take this virtual tour to get a taste of the site's full glory.
photo by: Drayton Hall Preservation Trust/Leslie McKeller
Conceived as a showplace and management hub at the center of a vast commercial plantation empire, Drayton Hall passed through seven generations of the Drayton family before being transferred to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1974. The estate is now operated by the Drayton Hall Preservation Trust, and its architecture, collections, and landscape survive in a rare state of preservation reflecting the evolution of early American society. In 2018, Drayton Hall will celebrate the opening of new facilities intended to improve the visitor experience, enhance the stewardship of historic resources, and expand interpretation and public programming.
photo by: Drayton Hall Preservation Trust/Leslie McKeller
Completed in the 1750s by John Drayton (1715–1779), Drayton Hall’s main house is the nation’s earliest example of fully executed Palladian architecture and the oldest preserved plantation house in America still open to the public. Despite wars, natural disasters, economic hardships, and three centuries of ownership, the house has remained remarkably intact as it was never altered with the addition of electricity, plumbing, heating, or air conditioning.
photo by: Drayton Hall Preservation Trust/Leslie McKeller
Drayton Hall’s iconic double portico is the only one of its kind in the world as it both projects from, and recedes into, the front of the house. While most early American houses of the period were built with centered gables to simulate a pedimented portico, Drayton Hall’s portico was fully executed in the Palladian fashion, representing a sophisticated understanding of classical architecture.
photo by: Drayton Hall Preservation Trust/Robbin Knight
The portico offers a sweeping view of the estate’s grounds, which reflect centuries of occupation, adaptation, and preservation. Vestiges of John Drayton’s picturesque eighteenth-century landscape survive to the present and serve as a backdrop for the nineteenth- and twentieth-century adaptations made by the Drayton family.
photo by: Drayton Hall Preservation Trust/Willie Graham
The 27-foot-high stair hall provides an impressive entrance for guests arriving at Drayton Hall. Carved from mahogany and stained with vermillion, the railing and brackets are examples of the overwhelming attention given to architectural detail within the main house.
Preservation Magazine: A Curious Attic Find: Drayton Hall's Watercolors
Anyone who has ever watched "Antiques Roadshow" dreams of stumbling across a hidden treasure in a dusty attic. Descendants of the 18th-century plantation owner John Drayton did exactly that, finding a portfolio of watercolors on the top floor of a family member’s house in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1969.
photo by: Drayton Hall Preservation Trust/Tony Sweet
John Drayton’s guests would have retired to the first-floor withdrawing room for conversation, games, and other social interaction. The ornate ceiling is the only one in the house that is original to the time of construction and considered the oldest hand-carved plaster ceiling in North America.
photo by: Drayton Hall Preservation Trust/Willie Graham
As evidenced by its elaborate Corinthian pilasters, the upper great hall was the most important room in the house and would have been used to entertain the most esteemed guests. The original firebox is surrounded by imported marble, while the nineteenth-century heraldry element over the mantel may have been painted by a Drayton family member.
photo by: Drayton Hall Preservation Trust
Within a first-floor room, a growth chart marks the heights of generations of Draytons from the 1880s to the present day. Charlotta Drayton (1884–1969) also kept a growth chart for her dogs, including her beloved Bull Terrier, Nipper.
photo by: Drayton Hall Preservation Trust/Leslie McKeller
The final resting place of at least forty individuals, enslaved and free, Drayton Hall’s African-American Cemetery is one of the oldest documented African-American cemeteries in the nation still in use. In keeping with the wishes of Richmond Bowens, a descendant of the enslaved at Drayton Hall, the cemetery has been “left natural,” not manicured or planted with grass or decorative shrubs.
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