Origins of my heritage

By Temple Ligon

Now through the first week this coming January is an exhibition of the work of 16C Italian architect Andrea Palladio, arguably the most influential architect in history.  He wrote what Thomas Jefferson and Robert Mills read, The Four Books of Architecture.

There’s plenty of Palladio in Parma and Vicenza and Venice, but in the United States we started too late for Palladio, but we have lots of Palladianism, just like the rest of the world. Palladio’s style of architecture is all over the place. One good place to start is the state capitol building in Columbia, South Carolina. The nation’s capitol, in fact, is also Palladian.

What most Southerners call Greco-Roman revival is heavily Palladian. Roman architecture was popular in the 18^th and 19^th centuries because America liked to reflect on republican Rome, not the imperial period. Jefferson’s design for his state capitol in Richmond was a spinoff of a Roman temple in Nimes, France.

Palladio may have been the most influential, but Michelangelo was the greatest architect. Michelangelo died in 1564, while Palladio lived until 1580, and he was undoubtedly the greatest architect in the Renaissance once Michelangelo pulled out.

So if Palladio’s buildings are so great, guess everybody around here will go see the exhibition. One major impediment: The exhibition is in the Royal Institute of British Architects headquarters building near the south side of Regent’s Park in London.

On the other hand, what’s wrong with a trip to London in the first week of the year? Everybody blows their budgets over the holidays, so airline seats and hotel rooms should be priced down a bit. But be careful: This is London we’re talking about. Cheap for London is still an outrage here. Hold on to your wallet.

Still, it’s tough to turn down an opportunity to see the exhibition. Thanks to two Brits, two architecture aficionados, the collection on Palladio’s drawings at the RIBA is the best in the world. For that matter, the number of drawings by Palladio produced in the Renaissance and held in place at the RIBA constitute the world’s largest collection. Better put: The RIBA Palladio collection is more than all the other Renaissance architectural drawings available around the world combined.

There. That’s all we need to know.

Now, for a South Carolinian, there’s an important and fun thing to do in London. In what is called The City and also The Square Mile, which is known as Dr. Johnson’s London, the center for finance is the street intersection where the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and the London Stock Exchange all face each other. Walk maybe a Columbia city block along the south side of the Royal Exchange and hang a right onto Birchin Lane. Within a couple hundred feet on Birchin, look to the left side of the street for #25 Birchin Lane, which is not only the street address but it is also the name of the bar.

Birchin Lane, #25, was the Carolina Coffee House. This was where Anthony Ashley Cooper, one of the Lords Proprietors, met every Tuesday morning at eleven with philosopher John Locke soon after the king’s second charter for Carolina was issued in 1665. The second charter covered all the land from today’s border between Virginia and North Carolina down to roughly Daytona Beach and then between those two limits all across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. Any idea how many square miles Carolina was at its beginning in the King Charles II second charter?

Jamestown began in 1607 with a bunch of worthless daddys’ boys who had no practical skills. They were gentleman, not farmers or blacksmiths or laborers. As an enterprise Jamestown failed until success struck with tobacco around 1620. Before then Jamestown stayed active thanks to lotteries on the streets of London. And even then, even when tobacco was a success, Jamestown was shut down in 1699, and the capital of Virginia was moved to Williamsburg.

Plymouth Rock was hit in 1620, and Boston began in 1630, but Boston barely survived with little more than religious zealots for a population.

Carolina, then, was going to be started and maintained by families, real people with real skills and real population expansion already under way.

Cooper and Locke and every now and then another member of the Lords Proprietors met on Tuesdays with suitable people willing to try this idea of Carolina. They were given some pamphlets and other reading material to include Locke’s and Cooper’s Fundamentals for a Carolina Constitution when it was finished around 1669. Charleston began with its first settlers in 1670.

The first settlers were the type of people to expect getting out of England and heading for the wilderness. They were looking forward to living under wilderness rules, which meant few rules. Government was not their thing. Understanding that is to understand why Locke’s and Cooper’s ideas on home rule were rejected. Most any government structure would be rejected by this crowd. Still, the discussion that the Carolina settlers had something like the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness one hundred years before the Declaration of Independence begins to swell the pride of all South Carolinians.

I’m going to see the RIBA Palladio drawings this January and I’m going to #25 Birchin Lane, formerly the Carolina Coffee House, and I’m going to soak up origins of my heritage, both cultural and political, and I challenge you to do same.

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