Second-Year student Meredith Wilson, along with her classmate Michelle Thompson and alumna Amy Elizabeth Uebel, presented the results of the documentation of 59 Church Street, the Thomas Rose House, she coordinated during her summer internship at a gathering of Historic Charleston Foundation staff, historic preservationists, and realtors on September 22.
Following her presentation of how the documentation team assemble for the 59 Church street project carried out its work, Wilson presented full sets of documentation photographs, HABS-level drawings of the houses, and a history of the house to Cathy Forrester, owner of the house, Helen Geer, a member of Historic Charleston Foundation’s board of directors and agent-in-charge of William Means Company, and the Margaretta Childs Archive at Historic Charleston Foundation. Meredith will be entering her drawings of 59 Church in the 2016 Holland Prize Competition.
The Thomas Rose House is one of Charleston’s oldest surviving eighteenth-century dwellings. Restored in 1929, the house was later purchased by Connecticut architectural historian Henry Philip Staats and his wife Juliette, both active in the formation of Historic Charleston Foundation. They and their descendants have owned the house for more than 80 years and maintained it with few changed over that period. The house is thus a remarkable time capsule of of restoration practice and interior furnishings, an important aspect of this documentation effort.