The Wedge Plantation, which is also known as The Wedge or the William Lucas House, is a

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

about east of McClellanville in Charleston County, South Carolina. The plantation is a wedge-shaped property between the

Harrietta Plantation Harrieta Plantation is a plantation about east of McClellanville in Charleston County, South Carolina. It is located off US Highway 17 near the Santee River, adjacent to the Wedge Plantation and just south of Fairfield Plantation. The plan ...

and the Fairfield Plantation. The

plantation house A plantation house is the main house of a plantation, often a substantial farmhouse, which often serves as a symbol for the plantation as a whole. Plantation houses in the Southern United States and in other areas are known as quite grand and e ...

was built around 1830. It is located off

US Highway 17 U.S. Route 17 or U.S. Highway 17 (US 17), also known as the Coastal Highway, is a north–south United States Highway that spans in the southeastern United States. It runs close to the Atlantic Coast for much of its length, with ...

near the

Santee River } The Santee River is a river in South Carolina in the United States, and is long. The Santee and its tributaries provide the principal drainage for the coastal areas of southeastern South Carolina and navigation for the central coastal plain of ...

. It was named to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

on September 18, 1975.

History

The house was built by a rice planter William Lucas around 1826. Lucas was a son of Jonathan Lucas, who invented a rice-pounding mill. It remained in the Lucas family for the next hundred years. It was a working rice plantation up to about 1914. In 1929, Mr. and Mrs. Elbridge Chadwick acquired the plantation and restored the house with the assistance of architect

Albert Simons Albert Simons (1890 – 1980), had a sixty-year career as an architect and preservationist in Charleston, South Carolina, where he is known for his preservation work and architectural design. He played a key role in the Charleston Renaissance. ...

. In 1948, Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Woodward purchased it for a winter home. Dr. and Mrs. Richard B. Dominick owned the Wedge Plantation from 1966 to 1976. During the ten-years of his life there, Dominick collected over 25,000

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

s and 1,000 butterflies on the plantation. The Richard B. Dominick Moth and Butterfly Collection resides at the University of South Carolina's McKissick Museum in

Columbia, South Carolina Columbia is the List of capitals in the United States, capital of the U.S. state of South Carolina. With a population of 136,632 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is List of municipalities in South Carolina, the second-largest ...

. Richard Dominick established the Wedge Entomological Research Foundation for the publication of the ''Moths of North America North of Mexico''. Richard Dominick died at The Wedge in May, 1976. His estate owned the property for another six years. In the 1970s, The Wedge was purchased by the State of South Carolina for "about $1 million." It became the University of South Carolina's International Center for Public Health Research for the study of insect-borne diseases. This program was closed in 1995 when funding for it expired and was not renewed. The University then leased The Wedge until 2014 for hunting and other uses, including the 2009

Kevin Costner Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, producer, film director and musician. He has received various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actor ...

film '' The New Daughter ''. Attempts to sell the plantation have failed. The university's board of trustees determined that the annual cost of maintaining the plantation at $385,000 in 2013, but the university allots only $100,000 yearly as of 2020. In 2014, the plantation was put up for sale at $4 million (~$ in ), but no offers were made. A subsequent attempt to find a buyer using a real estate agent also failed. An appraisal of the plantation's value included $500,000 in needed repairs. On July 3, 2020, the university opened the bidding process again with the minimum bid pegged at $3.2 million, with bids due by August 20, 2020.

Architecture

The house was constructed around 1826. This is a Federal style,

clapboard Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of these terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Clapboard'' in modern Americ ...

house on a raised basement. The basic shape of this -story house is rectangular. The house has a gable roof with dormers. The front horseshoe stairs to the porch are granite with an iron railing. A semicircular archway leads to the basement. The portico is supported by four fluted Doric columns. The

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedim ...

has a semi-elliptical window. It is decorated with dentate molding. The second floor has

French doors A door is a hinged or otherwise movable barrier that allows ingress (entry) into and egress (exit) from an enclosure. The created opening in the wall is a ''doorway'' or ''portal''. A door's essential and primary purpose is to provide security b ...

with a fanlight transom that open to the railed balcony on the portico. The south facade has single nine over nine lights on either side of the doors. Each wing has four nine over nine lights. In the second story, there are pairs of six over six lights to the left and right of the porch gable. The front door has a fanlight transom. Dormer windows and basement windows are six over six lights. The gabled ends have three six over six lights. The east and west elevations have four nine over nine lights. The north elevation has two dormers. There are four windows on each floor and a window in the stairwell between the first and second floors. The rear portico has four Doric columns. The interior has a four-room, central hall plan. The main floor has right and left parlors separated by the central hall. Behind are an alcove and library on the right and a kitchen and laundry on the left. The basement includes a wine cellar, storage room. The basement floor is brick. One room has a millstone incorporated in its floor.

PBS ''New Home Show'' project

A PBS television show entitled, "The New Home Show" built a modern-day replica of the Wedge Plantation home near Matthews, North Carolina using modern day materials. The replica was designed by William Poole. The Wedge Plantation project was built over 18 episodes. Additional photographs of the exterior of the house are available.

References

External links

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The Wedge Plantation - Charleston, South Carolina
photos and history {{DEFAULTSORT:Wedge, The Historic American Buildings Survey in South Carolina Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in South Carolina Federal architecture in South Carolina Houses completed in 1826 1826 establishments in South Carolina Houses in Charleston County, South Carolina Plantation houses in South Carolina National Register of Historic Places in Charleston County, South Carolina