Charleston Antebellum Architecture and Civic Destiny (review)

152Southeastern Geographer which to base a course on the South or for a special gift to a Southerner, this would be my choice. Charles F. Kovacik, Department ofGeography, University ofSouth Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208. Charleston Antebellum Architecture and Civic Destiny. Kenneth Severens . Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1988. xiii and 315 pp., photographs, maps, bibliography, index. $49.95 (ISBN 0-87049-555-0) This nicely illustrated volume focuses on the public buildings of Charleston, South Carolina, and the relationship between architecture and what the author refers to as civic destiny. Its goal is to record Charleston's architectural expression by looking at the work of individual architects, period styles, individual buildings, the broader urban context, and vernacular as well as high-style architecture. Kenneth Severens argues that almost immediately after its founding in the late 1600s, Charleston sought to create an ambitious self-image as a city destined to become a great metropolis. This led to public building campaigns to create the appropriate cityscape. Initially, this was to enhance Charleston's political destiny, particularly when it was the fourth largest city in British North America, but when Columbia supplanted it as the state capital in 1786, the focus turned more toward a destiny based on economic and cultural achievement. The extensive use of primary documents lends credence to Severens' central thesis. Numerous quotes from contemporary chronicles drawn from ten newspapers and over 70 private manuscripts and public records series demonstrate the relationship between the built environment and the city's aspirations. These accounts also effectively demonstrate the local awareness of works executed in other parts of the country, as well as abroad, and contemporary local perceptions of the city's architecture. Severens is most convincing as he traces the changes in tenor of these accounts from the mid-18th through the mid-19th centuries , incisively discerning the shift to less-ambitious civic aspirations. From the three perspectives that I am reviewing this book—architectural historian, historic preservationist, and geographer—I have different reactions. Severens provides a sound if not inspired architectural Vol. XXIX, No. 2 153 analysis that is readable but also of use to the researcher. He recognizes the significance of a variety of buildings, even some that traditionally have been overlooked, in the overall urbanscape and gives an informative in-depth treatment of high-style architecture. As a professional in historic preservation, I was pleased that so much information about Charleston had been gathered into a single work. This is particularly important as a record especially of those resources that already have been lost from one cause or another. From a geographic perspective, however, the book is less than fully satisfying. It does present a considerable amount of raw material for potential analysis and puts certain architectural styles and individual buildings into a broader context of social history and the goals of Charleston's promoters. But the book does not really develop an image of the overall urban landscape as an expression of the city's civic destiny . Other problems are related to the mechanics of presentation. The addition of several maps would have made some of the central points of the book much clearer. For instance, the first section begins with the initial planning of the city in the late 17th century. The "Grand Modell," the 1672 plan for the city, and subsequent variations are frequently referenced but never illustrated. Indeed, the three maps that are included, which span the period 1710—1861, use the same base, display the same street network, and show the same arrangement of wharfs, docks, and intrusion of marsh, despite the fact that the city changed noticeably during this period. Readers unfamiliar with Charleston will have difficulty conceptualizing the urban landscape as it evolved over the 150year period covered in the book. One meaure of the utility of the book is the effective organization of the index. The bibliography also is very good, particularly the section on manuscripts which is arranged by holding institution. I was, however, disappointed that some of the more recent published works by other authors, such as Calhoun and Zierden's Charleston s Commercial Landscape : 1803-1860, which is an excellent study of the commercial life and...