Charleston County · Marker 10-105
Pinckney Mansion
235 East Bay St., Charleston
Front inscription
The Pinckney Mansion was a Colonial double house built c.1746 at this site, then a large waterfront lot known as Colleton Square. It is believed to have been designed by owner Charles Pinckney (c.1699-1758), a planter and Chief Justice of Provincial S.C. His wife Eliza Lucas (1722-1793) lived here after helping found colonial S.C.’s indigo industry. Enslaved people and free workers, skilled and unskilled, built the house. Colonial governors leased the property 1753-69.
Reverse inscription
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746-1825), a framer of the U.S. Constitution, was among the mansion’s residents. The house was one of the first in the U.S. with a Classical temple front façade. Among the first Palladian villas in Charleston, it helped set a new trend of planters keeping their main dwelling in town instead of at the plantation. Also at the site was a graden and a long row of outbuildings, including slave quarters and stables. Pinckneys owned the house until it burned in 1861.