Good buildings come from good architects; that is, if you know who it was

By Temple Ligon

Tuesday night, July 12, PBS broadcast a two-hour documentary on the history of the White House. It began with mostly physical building history – when construction began with what materials and when the project was finished with what praise and appreciation, and when the building burned and was rebuilt, faithfully following the original design.

Whenever a history of a building, any building, comes across for a two-hour time frame – or even a one-hour program or just a half-hour – the name of the architect usually surfaces early on since the architect was brought on board before the builders or the first occupants. And the architect’s success in delivering a famous façade, a memorable membrane, as it were, something the whole country has loved for two centuries, all that stacks up to cry, “OK, fine, but who designed it? Huh? Who was the architect? Geez.”

I sat for the full two hours because it was actually a good show, maybe a great show as these things go. But nowhere in the two hours did the name of the architect come out. I was a little more anxious than the average viewer because I have degrees in art and architectural history, and I was already fairly informed on the architect of the White House, South Carolina’s James Hoban.

We may not all know we’re looking at the work of James Hoban, but we South Carolinians are readily familiar with his Charleston County Courthouse on the Four Corners of Law and the Seabrook House just off S. C. Highway 174 on Edisto Island.

Hoban was really Irish with an Irish architectural education at the Dublin Society’s Drawing School, coming to Charleston in April 1787.

President Washington came through Charleston (and Columbia) in 1791 when he met Hoban, and they talked about Hoban’s work a few years earlier in Philadelphia. In Columbia Washington visited and admired Hoban’s S. C. State House, 1790 – burned in 1865.

Washington asked Thomas Jefferson to manage an architectural design competition among six architectural designers for the White House commission. Washington directed that Hoban be invited to compete. Three proposals were dismissed up front and the other three qualified for further development. Hoban won among the final three, and just the drama of an architectural design competition should be adequate material to at least mention the architect in a building’s history. Never mind the building’s appeal.

Hoban did all right with the rest of his career. He stayed in Washington and cranked out good work, famous work, until his death in 1831 at age 76.

And PBS will continue to do all right. Still, PBS needs to post on its walls, “A building worth covering? Always mention the architect. Please.”