60 Meeting Street: The History Behind an Extraordinary Restoration
An eighteenth-century house beneath a Victorian silhouette. A family story that reaches beyond Charleston. And a restoration whose most remarkable achievement is knowing which past to preserve.
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At the northeast corner of Meeting and Tradd Streets, one house asks you to look twice. The first glance catches the pointed turret, the silver-gray roof and the extravagant arrangement of windows. The second begins to notice something stranger: this Victorian house is carrying a much older building inside it.
That layered identity explains why its latest renovation is so extraordinary. The project recognized the late nineteenth century as a meaningful chapter in the house’s life. Preserving that chapter required research as well as craftsmanship.
Recognition followed in 2026: a Carolopolis Award, inclusion among Historic Charleston Foundation’s Charter Day honorees, and a South Carolina Historic Preservation Honor Award. Those are distinct acknowledgments from distinct preservation programs.[1][2][3]
About this history. This account follows the building from its eighteenth-century origins through October 2026. It draws on preservation records, municipal documents, an archival photograph, family history and contemporary reporting. It is not an uninterrupted chain of title. Where accounts disagree, or where a primary record remains unexamined, the distinction appears below.
01 / Eighteenth century
Before the turret
The house is commonly associated with merchant William Ellis. Published histories describe it as one half of an original double tenement: two adjoining dwellings, with the western half occupying the Meeting Street corner. Here, “tenement” describes a dwelling held or let as property; the word should not automatically summon the crowded apartment blocks of a later era.[4]
The adjoining house at 64 Tradd Street helps explain that earlier arrangement. Its current architectural description identifies the two properties as Ellis’s double tenement and notes their shared chimneys. That physical relationship is more useful than trying to imagine the corner house’s present roof on an eighteenth-century street.[5]
The original building was three stories. Its later fourth story and elaborate roofline changed the reading of the whole structure. What looks at first like a house conceived in the Victorian period began as an earlier masonry dwelling with a different architectural character.[4]
The construction-date problem
The records do not speak with one voice. Charleston’s May 2021 Board of Architectural Review documents identify the property as circa 1771. Historic Charleston Foundation and Preservation South Carolina also use 1771. A 2018 Charleston.com history places Ellis’s construction in the 1740s, while real-estate data often give 1746. The adjoining 64 Tradd is marketed as circa 1760.[6][2][3][4][7][5]
The responsible conclusion is an eighteenth-century origin, with circa 1771 the date used in the municipal and recent preservation records consulted here. Establishing whether the earlier dates refer to the same construction campaign, a predecessor structure or a repeated attribution would require the original deeds and building research. Averaging the dates would produce false precision.
02 / The nineteenth-century household
The Marshalls, and the history beauty cannot erase
A family compilation, A Brief History of the Family of Sophie Marshall (Albright) and Family as of 1986, reports that John Thompson Marshall purchased the house from William Floyd in 1852. It describes the northeast corner of Meeting and Tradd and explicitly identifies the surviving building as No. 60. The same volume dates Marshall’s life to 1801–1860 and associates the house with him and his wife, Ruth Sutcliff Marshall.[8]
This is valuable evidence, with limits: it is a retrospective family account, not the original 1852 deed. Its purchase statement can be reported as such; it cannot substitute for a verified title abstract.
The account also connects the Marshalls’ wealth to plantations and the enslavement of more than 350 people. That figure concerns the family’s wider holdings. It is not a count of people living or working at 60 Meeting Street. The source does not establish their individual names or the household’s precise labor arrangements at this address.[8]
A history of this house must hold both kinds of evidence together: the named owners whose family preserved its memories, and the people whose coerced labor supported the wealth those memories celebrate. Architectural admiration does not settle that imbalance. Nor should an incomplete record be filled with invented biographies.
The family volume includes a later photograph of the turreted building under a caption identifying it as the Marshalls’ last home. The image records the subsequent appearance of a place associated with them; it does not show what the building looked like during their occupancy. That distinction matters whenever an old photograph illustrates an even older story.
03 / 1884–1893
Bertram Kramer changes the silhouette
The next decisive architectural chapter belongs to Bertram Kramer. Garden & Gun’s 2017 account gives 1884 as the year he acquired the house. The major transformation is dated to 1893 in the recent preservation accounts. These are different events: acquisition and renovation.[9][3]
Kramer, described in the architectural histories as a building contractor, recast the earlier house in high Victorian taste. The alterations added a fourth story within a mansard roof and a prominent turret. Enlarged openings, projecting bays, elaborate window heads, a substantial cornice and ornamental ironwork gave the older building an emphatically new public face.[4][7]
“Victorian” is a period label as much as a style. At this house, the mansard roof carries a Second Empire association, while the projecting forms and lively silhouette contribute to its eclectic character. Calling the entire building simply “colonial” misses its visible identity; calling it simply “Victorian” misses the older structure that made the transformation possible.
The photographs reward a closer reading. Broad bays flank the center. Above them, the steep roof presents a patterned surface to the street. Beneath that roof, rows of brackets make a deep shadow line. Lower down, the curved opening and the thin, repetitive iron railing introduce very different kinds of ornament: one massive and sculptural, the other almost drawn in air.
A family connection beyond Charleston
Kramer’s household also enters another South Carolina history. Daniel G. Corrigan and Richard L. Gorrell’s A Century of Healing identifies Bertram Frederick Kramer and Harriette Catherine McCants Kramer as the parents of Virginia “Jennie” Kramer Gilmer. It describes the daughters’ summers in Anderson and illustrates the family’s turreted Meeting Street home.[10]
AnMed’s own history credits Jennie Gilmer’s campaign with helping establish the hospital that opened in Anderson on April 20, 1908. The connection extends this house’s story beyond its façade into the lives of a family associated with it. It does not make 60 Meeting Street the birthplace of the hospital, and the two histories should not be collapsed into one.[11]
04 / The twentieth century
A house becomes an architectural record
The twentieth-century record is uneven. Historic Charleston Foundation’s catalog of Civic Services Committee Papers includes 60 Meeting among photographs grouped under alterations of old houses into multiple dwellings and new construction on old garden sites. The collection concerns the early preservation and planning movement, including wartime housing pressures.[12]
That catalog entry establishes a research lead. Its grouped description does not, on its own, establish how many units this particular house contained, when any conversion occurred or who occupied them. Those questions require the individual photograph, directories, census entries and property files.
A much firmer visual milestone is Charles N. Bayless’s May 1980 photograph for the Historic American Buildings Survey. The Library of Congress holds one photograph for this survey, with its caption sheet. The accompanying “data” PDF is a title sheet, not a narrative building history.[13]
The photograph isolates the balcony and curved opening. It shows the long-standing relationship between the horseshoe form, the door and transom within it, and the ironwork in front. The stained surface beneath the balcony also reminds us that historic buildings endure through maintenance, not by standing outside time.
It is a detail view, not a full condition survey. It cannot tell us the state of the roof in 1980, and it should not be presented as a whole-house “before” photograph for the latest project.
05 / The early twenty-first century
The house Charleston put a hat on
Public-record information reproduced by Homes.com identifies Bea H. Smith as the seller in an April 2003 transfer to Rebekah Stewart, followed by a 2012 trust-related transfer and a sale in November 2020. These are reported transaction milestones, not a complete twentieth-century ownership history. Garden & Gun says Stewart bought in 2002; the discrepancy with the public-record compilation is left visible here.[14][9]
Stewart’s seasonal decorations gave the house another kind of significance. Caroline Sanders Clements’s December 2017 Garden & Gun article describes the custom Santa hat placed on the turret and reports that a Halloween witch’s hat joined the tradition in 2013. Stewart explained the architectural logic: “The cupola lends itself to its seasonal hats.”[9]
These were temporary additions, but they helped make an elaborate private house part of the city’s shared visual calendar. Its most theatrical feature became an invitation to notice it. A building can matter to people who never enter its front door.
The daily work of keeping it standing continued alongside the spectacle. A September 2019 city staff-approval report records repair to a front window’s bottom rail and replacement and reglazing at a small bathroom window, with repainting. Small entries like these belong in a house’s history alongside major campaigns.[15]
06 / The latest major rehabilitation
The extraordinary part is the judgment
By May 2021, the city’s Board of Architectural Review records named Jon Mazzoli as owner and Joseph Cronk as applicant. Two carriage-house items—one involving partial demolition, another involving proposed changes and additions—were listed as deferred by staff. They document proposals under review, not completed construction.[6]
A December 2, 2021 staff-review entry subsequently records interior and exterior work according to submitted plans, noting preliminary board approval with final details assigned to staff. The public record thus places the new campaign in review during 2021, rather than making it an undated makeover.[16]
Preservation South Carolina’s project account describes architectural investigation, paint analysis and material testing. The resulting treatment returned the exterior to its documented 1893 appearance, including the white finish. It also describes compatible stucco repairs; work on historic windows, metalwork, chimneys, balconies and masonry; stabilization of outbuildings and garden walls; archaeological documentation; and discreet structural improvements.[3]
Custom lead-coated copper shingles, reproduced using a salvaged original roof tile as the model, according to the state preservation award account.[3]
The roof makes the result legible from the street. Its repeated units turn an enormous, complicated surface into a precise pattern. Recreating that pattern preserves something a generic replacement could easily lose: the texture that gives the mansard and turret their particular presence.
The preservation account identifies H. Michael White, Jr.; Joseph Steven Cronk and Clifford G. Duch of Cronk Duch Architecture; Stephanie Jarvis of Stephanie Jarvis, Inc.; and James C. Meadors of Meadors, Inc. among the state award recipients. Historic Charleston Foundation’s separate account recognizes owner Jon Mazzoli and Meadors and notes the modernization of building systems and correction of damaging earlier alterations.[3][2]
That combination matters. The visible roof is part of a larger rehabilitation, including work that a photograph cannot adequately document. A beautiful exterior is not evidence of every concealed structural or mechanical intervention; the project accounts supply that part of the story.
The 1893 renovation had become history worth preserving.
This is the project’s most compelling idea. An eighteenth-century origin does not require every subsequent layer to be removed. The Victorian transformation is now part of what makes this address recognizable. Restoring it acknowledges that buildings acquire significance through change as well as age.
The awards provide a documented endpoint for this account. The Preservation Society held its 72nd Carolopolis Awards on February 27, 2026; Meadors identifies 60 Meeting among its 2026 recipients. Historic Charleston Foundation announced its Charter Day honorees in April. The state Honor Award followed in the 2026 program, whose July 30 ceremony is documented by the Preservation Society.[17][1][2][18]
These dates should not be mistaken for an exact construction-completion date. The sources reviewed establish recognition of the completed rehabilitation by 2026; they do not establish the day the last contractor left.
07 / The long view
A chronology, with the uncertainties intact
- 18th centuryEllis-associated double tenement. Municipal and preservation accounts use c.1771; earlier published dates remain unresolved. [2–7]
- 1852The Marshall family history reports John Thompson Marshall’s purchase from William Floyd. [8]
- 1884Kramer’s acquisition, as reported in the 2017 architectural account. [9]
- 1893The major Victorian transformation, the reference period chosen for the recent restoration. [3]
- 1940s recordsThe address appears in the Civic Services Committee’s architectural documentation; the grouped catalog entry needs item-level follow-up. [12]
- May 1980Bayless photographs the balcony details for HABS. [13]
- 2000s–2020Stewart ownership and the seasonal-hat tradition; reported purchase years differ. [9,14]
- 2021City records document review of the Mazzoli-era rehabilitation. [6,16]
- 2025The dated lead photograph records the house’s exterior on September 23.
- 2026Carolopolis, Charter Day and state preservation recognition. [1–3,17,18]
08 / Reading responsibly
What remains to be established
A comprehensive account should show its unfinished edges. The missing pieces here include an independently examined colonial-to-present deed chain; a complete roster of residents, tenants and workers; the individual records behind the wartime catalog entry; and address-specific evidence of damage and repairs during Charleston’s wars, earthquake and major hurricanes.
Those events belong to the city’s history. Attaching a particular damage story to this house requires evidence about this house. Likewise, the documented Marshall connection to slavery does not justify inventing the identities or number of enslaved people at the urban property.
Charleston County Public Library identifies the records that can advance this work: assessor’s ward books, city directories, census schedules, Sanborn maps, estate papers and the 1886 building-condition report. Historic Charleston Foundation also directs property researchers to deeds, plats and its archival files. These are concrete routes to the unanswered questions, rather than reasons to smooth them away.[19][20]
For now, the house itself offers the clearest closing image: an eighteenth-century structure, a nineteenth-century reinvention, twentieth-century documentation and a twenty-first-century act of care. The extraordinary restoration has made those layers easier to see. A rigorous history keeps them distinct enough to understand.
Sources, photograph credits & research notes
Research checked October 29, 2026. Numbers correspond to references in the text and chronology. Family recollections, real-estate summaries, archive catalogs and original municipal documents carry different kinds of evidence; they are identified accordingly.
- Meadors Inc., Our Story. Contractor’s record of the 2026 Carolopolis Award for 60 Meeting.
- Historic Charleston Foundation, Charter Day 2026 Award Winners, April 20, 2026. Owner, project scope, construction attribution and 1893 transformation.
- Preservation South Carolina, 60 Meeting Street. Detailed 2026 Honor Award account and recipient list. Principal source for the restoration methods and roof-shingle count.
- Charleston.com, 60 Meeting Street, September 10, 2018. Published architectural history; its 1740s date conflicts with recent institutional records.
- William Means, Historic Elegance Reimagined—64 Tradd Street. Adjacent property’s architectural description; a real-estate source, not a deed study.
- City of Charleston, BAR-Small results, May 13, 2021, pp.1–2, items 3–4. c.1771 attribution, owner/applicant and deferred proposals.
- Trulia, 60 Meeting Street. Reproduced listing history and architectural description; used with attribution, not as primary construction evidence.
- A Brief History of the Family of Sophie Marshall (Albright) and Family as of 1986, pp.2,4,13, hosted by Roots and Recall. Retrospective family evidence; the original deed was not examined.
- Caroline Sanders Clements, Deck the Cupola, Garden & Gun, December 20, 2017. Reporting with owner quotations; gives 1884 for Kramer’s acquisition and 2002 for Stewart’s purchase.
- Daniel G. Corrigan and Richard L. Gorrell, A Century of Healing, printed p.6 (PDF p.7). Kramer family connections and an illustration of their Meeting Street home.
- AnMed, History. Institutional account of Jennie Gilmer’s role and the April 20, 1908 hospital opening.
- Historic Charleston Foundation, Civic Services Committee Papers, HCF.001. Collection-level catalog description; individual photographs were not examined.
- Library of Congress, 60 Meeting Street (House), HABS SC-701; original photo-caption sheet. Charles N. Bayless, May 1980, SC-701-1, “Balcony Details.” Image obtained via Wikimedia Commons; resized for web display, public domain in the United States.
- Homes.com, 60 Meeting Street. Public-record transaction compilation. Purchase dates should be checked against original deeds for a formal title history.
- City of Charleston, BAR staff approvals, September 23–27, 2019. Window-maintenance entry.
- City of Charleston, BAR staff approvals, November 29–December 3, 2021, p.3. December 2 interior/exterior-work review.
- Preservation Society of Charleston, 72nd Carolopolis Awards, February 28, 2026. Ceremony date and award-program context.
- Preservation Society of Charleston, State honors Moby Marks, SOS Charleston with SC Preservation Awards, August 4, 2026. July 30 ceremony and 60 Meeting’s Honor Award.
- Charleston County Public Library, Useful Materials for Historic Property Research. Guide to ward books, directories, maps, census and earthquake records.
- Historic Charleston Foundation, Archives and Resources. Property-research methodology and archival resources.
Lead photograph: ProfReader, September 23, 2025, Wikimedia Commons, CC0; resized for web display. Archival photograph: Charles N. Bayless, May 1980, HABS / Library of Congress; public domain in the United States. Both show the actual building. No generated architectural images or speculative reconstructions are used.