Auldbrass Plantation (sometimes spelled Auld Brass) is a plantation in Beaufort County, South Carolina, United States, near the town of Yemassee. The building complex, consisting of more than 20 structures, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built starting in 1939. It is the only plantation complex Wright designed, as well as one of two buildings he designed in South Carolina, the other being Broad Margin in Greenville. The plantation was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
The plantation originally spanned and was previously composed of several separate tracts, which were granted to various colonists in 1731 and later acquired by Charles Leigh Stevens, an industrial consultant. One of the tracts was a land grant known as Old Brass, which was renamed Auldbrass after Stevens hired Wright to design a plantation there. Though most of the buildings were completed in the early 1950s, other structures remained unbuilt for several decades. After Stevens's death in 1962, his daughter Jessica Loring owned it until 1979, when it was sold to the paper company Westvaco, then to a group of hunters. It was purchased in 1986 by film producer Joel Silver, who began a multi-year renovation of the plantation, constructing some of the unbuilt structures from Wright's original plans. After the first phase of the renovation was finished in 1989, Auldbrass was occasionally opened to the public for limited tours.
Auldbrass includes a plantation house, cottages, guest house, caretaker's quarters, chicken shed, kennels, stables, and granary. The plantation house and the other buildings had hexagonal floor plans. The plantation had no grand entrance, and the buildings were inspired by the nature around it, with sloping cypress wood walls and copper roofs. The plantation house consists of two bedrooms, a study, and two bathrooms arranged around a living room. Near the plantation house are a cluster of farm buildings measuring long, in addition to servants' cottages.
Site The Auldbrass Plantation is located along the ACE Basin in Beaufort County, just southwest of the Combahee River, in the Lowcountry area of South Carolina, United States. The plantation is situated near the town of Yemassee, along River Road (Highway S-7-33). At the property's perimeter, a fence runs along River Road, which an access driveway intersects at a 60-degree angle. The plantation itself has an area of . The surrounding area has several large plantations such as Cherokee Plantation and Nemours Plantation.
The plantation originally spanned , composed of several separate tracts that were later acquired by Charles Leigh Stevens, an industrial consultant. A series of gravel driveways and landscaped esplanades connect the plantation's structures; the house's architect Frank Lloyd Wright had wanted to use red granite, but this was not done because it was too expensive. A covered walkway connects the buildings around the plantation house. The landscape architect Thomas D. Church was responsible for the landscape design, which included a low wall around the plantation house and several formal decorative planting beds. The plantation is illuminated at night by 500 lamps. Joel Silver, who acquired Auldbrass in 1986, added various sculptures to the property after acquiring it. Wright constructed a drainage canal and artificial lake on the property, but after the original lake dried up, it was not rebuilt until the 1990s.
Previous usage Prior to European colonization of the Americas, the land was occupied by the indigenous Yamasee, who were forced out in 1715 during the Yamasee War. The land was parceled out and land grants were given to various colonists, starting in 1731. The site of Auldbrass contained as many as 16 land grants during the mid-18th century. The property owners built several structures on their respective properties, none of which survive. The grant for Mount Pleasant, the land surrounding the current plantation's main building, was issued in 1736 to Charles Barker and originally covered . This later became the property of John Deas, whose house was completed in 1758, at the site of the main building.
Several of the smaller grants had been combined by 1760; five of these land grants—Mount Pleasant, Mount Alexander, Charlton, Richfield, and Old Combahee—would eventually be combined to form Auldbrass. James Michie owned the Richfield and Mount Alexander grants, and Walter Izard owned Old Combahee. The first use of the name "Old Brass" for the plantation is attributed to John H. Screven, who bought Mount Pleasant in 1859 and sold it five years later to William Middleton. It is not known how the name "Old Brass" came about, but the name is variously cited as having been derived from slaves' skin color, a specific slave, or a landing on the river. In any case, James U. Jackson obtained Old Brass and some adjacent land at the beginning of the 20th century. During World War I, Jackson's land was acquired by the Savannah River Lumber Company; Stevens acquired the land in 1938.
History After living in several places across the U.S., Stevens developed a house in Westwood, Massachusetts, in the 1920s, where he planned to build a large estate. Only the gardener's cottage had been completed when the Great Depression began. Stevens lived there until 1934, and his family owned it until 1993. When Stevens approached Wright to design the plantation in the late 1930s, the architect was busy with several major commissions, having completed Fallingwater in Pennsylvania and the Johnson Wax Administration Building in Wisconsin. At the time, many wealthy people from the Northern United States had acquired plantations in the South Carolina Lowcountry, where they spent their winters.
Development and early years
Planning It is unclear why Stevens hired Wright, but he had written a letter to the architect by December 1938, asking Wright to design him a house. Stevens requested that the architect design him a fully functioning farm, where Stevens could test out agricultural innovations. Wright agreed because he had never designed a farm in the Southern United States. After clearing underbrush and timber from the site, Stevens sent Wright photographs of the site in April 1939, along with two books on traditional Southern plantations to indicate what he did not want. Wright ultimately drew around 500 drawings for the plantation. The first drawings, completed in July 1939, called for a garden, plantation house, and guesthouse clustered along the river, in addition to farm buildings clustered farther away from the water. These structures all had hexagonal floor plans and were connected by a pathway, with a shared roof over each cluster of buildings. The guesthouse was to have space for 15 people, and there were to be separate accommodations for a property manager and servants.
Wright sent Stevens a revised plan for the plantation in August 1939, adding cabins and a swimming pool. By then, the farm buildings included space for 40 dogs, 15 horses or mules, 500 chickens, and 5 cows. It was around this time that Wright renamed the plantation from "Old Brass" to "Auldbrass", using the Scottish word for "old" in a reference to his mother's Welsh heritage. Stevens wrote to Wright twice in late 1939, asking to see the plans, but Wright did not complete his plans until January 1940. The revised plans called for a plantation house and a larger guesthouse on the riverbank, as well as a cluster of farm buildings farther inland; the two clusters of buildings were oriented parallel to each other. As built, the plantation largely adhered to these plans, with minor changes. Simultaneously, Stevens had to give up his Massachusetts house after divorcing his first wife, and he set up a trust to prevent his South Carolina property from being seized, which delayed the start of Auldbrass's construction. The divorce would be finalized in 1942.
First phase of construction Two of Wright's senior apprentices completed the plantation's working drawings in August 1940. Though construction began the next month, the project was immediately hampered by a lack of construction materials. Delays also arose due to Wright's unfamiliarity with the site, Stevens's unavailability, and the unconventional design details (the plans for which local contractors could not fully comprehend). Stevens hired the contractor C. P. Street of the J. J. McDevitt Company to construct the buildings, which were estimated to cost around $90,000. T. F. Haddock of the McDevitt Company was appointed as the construction supervisor, and Peter Berndtson, a junior apprentice of Wright's firm, supervised the design. Wright's son-in-law, William Wesley Peters, oversaw later stages of construction. Due to wartime material shortages, copper foil was substituted for copper, and the cypress boards had to be cut to a narrower thickness than originally proposed. Despite uncertainty concerning the structural details, concrete foundation pads were being poured for the farm buildings by the end of 1940.
The caretaker's house and some of the farm buildings were nearly completed by mid-1941. Wright had to adjust the plans due to his unfamiliarity with the site; the positions of the plantation house and guesthouse were swapped for reasons that have never been documented. In addition, Stevens divorced and remarried twice, and he changed the plans every time he remarried. After receiving the first set of revised plans in August 1941, Stevens directed the McDevitt Company to begin constructing the plantation house. Stevens also ordered material for the plantation, even as wartime restrictions had created shortages of objects such as wood and copper. By the end of 1941, many of the farm buildings were finished, and work on the plantation house just starting. Stevens also contemplated constructing several additional outbuildings that were not constructed, such as a bathhouse and large staff cottage.
A reporter for the Atlanta Journal, who visited the plantation in early 1942, wrote that Haddock "had no idea when it would be completed" and predicted that the project would cost $200,000. Nonetheless, work on the plantation house progressed more quickly than the farm buildings, and the house was completed by December 1942. Afterward, construction was halted because of a lack of funds and Stevens's unavailability. Stevens still owed tens of thousands of dollars to McDevitt Company (by then known as McDevitt & Street), who filed a lien against the property in 1943; the lien was lifted the next year, before the plantation could be sold at a foreclosure auction. Additionally, Stevens's second wife Ann was uninterested in Auldbrass's development, despite his efforts to bring her into the project. The plantation house's copper roof, which fell into disrepair soon after the building was completed, was subsequently resurfaced in asphalt and tar.
Completion and usage