By Blan Holman / Photos by Squire Fox
William Bates– designer, architectural historian, paint sleuth – gets a new coat.
When he began renovating his 1830’s home on Mall Park in Charleston’s east side neighborhood several years ago, he faced a big task. Moving to Charleston in 2005 to found the Architectural Drawing and Design department at the American College of the Building Arts he purchased a house on Mall Park in Charleston’s eastside neighborhood, he not only wanted to restore the house correctly and historically but also bring things up to modern standards. The house had no roof, no windows and had been abandoned for 10 years. The job required major structural and interior work to bring things back to their former glory. On went the air filter. Out came the sledge. And the toothbrush.
Bates knew that demolitions done wrong mean history lost. Following an architectural Hippocratic oath, he avoided doing harm where he could, but went further to preserve evidence of what had to change.
While Bates sweated all the details – original floor boards, reproduction hardware, handcrafted plaster ceilings – he took special care when it came to paint. Standard demolition tosses whole walls in the dumpster. Bates harvested and saved scraps of wall and trim, plaster and wood. He then started peeling layers from these historic onions to trace a story of color.
Bates was familiar with the groundbreaking work of the Historic Charleston Foundation, which has catalogued historic hues for use in restorations. Bates used similar painstaking technique, gently sanding and flaking paint from his samples, tracking and documenting the progression of color layers. He was curious if the palette of the east side – a neighborhood established by free blacks and merchants – differed from that found downtown.
He made several striking discoveries. First was a pattern of paint coats going from light to dark to darkest through time, then resetting with a light shade and again getting darker. The sequence may have owed to the omnispresent dirt and smoke that coated the homes of those who cooked and heated with wood. Maybe people let things go as long as they could, then set things light. Another interesting discovery: painted oak patterning on the interior doors, recalling trompe l’oeil techniques found downtown.
BATES HARVESTED AND SAVED SCRAPS OF WALL AND TRIM, PLASTER AND WOOD. HE THEN STARTED PEELING LAYERS FROM THESE HISTORIC ONIONS TO TRACE A STORY OF COLOR.
Not content with his own efforts, Bates then took things to a higher level. He sent his samples scraps to researchers for physical and chemical testing. They used microscopes and ultraviolet light to determine the types of paints used, date of application and their “true” color. Where Bates had matched layers with color samples visually, the researchers produced a thick report brimming with testing data. The appendix contains images of cross-sectioned samples, the strata of painted olive, beige and maroons tightly stacked like a mutant mufelata.
Bates hopes that his story will encourage those who refurbish Charleston houses to preserve what cultural evidence they can, rather than sending it all away to Bee’s Ferry landfill. Scraps of walls, shutters, frames, ceiling – all hold clues of how structures were built and looked, and how people lived in them. Even scraps found in the attic could prove valuable down the road, like his discovery of some of the original wooden shingles under new roofing material. Keeping these fragments onsite preserves the link between the material and its source, a key part of the historic puzzle.
William Bates painted swatches to match the painted layers he discovered on pieces of original wall and trim.
Bates provided his paint report to the Board of Architectural Review for inclusion in his property’s permanent file. There, it will serve as reference for those piecing together Charleston’s evolving palette through time. The historic record is important even if inhabitants choose different colors in their homes going forward, notes Bates. Once lost, it is gone forever.
That philosophy informs his teaching at the American College of the Building Arts, where he founded the Architectural Drawing and Design Department. Students are schooled in classical architectural forms, as well as ancient techniques in stone carving, timber framing, carpentry, ironworking and masonry. These foundations serve as the building blocks for lifelong learning. “It’s useful to know Latin,” says Bates, “even if you don’t plan to speak it. Classical architecture should provide a framework for all built work.”
