Adams Style
by Robert Stockton
the Mantel and moldings of the drawing rooms show the delicacy and lightness of scale typical of adamesque architecture.
Excavations at Pompeii helped create an international style. Charleston has no shortage of examples.
The Timothy Ford House at 54 Meeting Street, built ca. 1800, has some of the best Adamesque architectural features in the city. Ford, a New Jersey native, built his home in the popular style named for the British architects, Robert and James Adam. The style was inspired by archaeological excavations at Pompeii, a Roman city buried by ash from a volcanic eruption in 79 A.D. Dug up by scholars, the ruins revealed that Roman private homes were more humanly scaled than the great temples and palaces on which Renaissance architecture was based. A new emphasis on slender columns, delicate forms, classical figures and gesso ornamentation, created an international style. The Ford House has an abundance of such detail in its well-proportioned rooms. The Charleston single house is the home of Dr. and Mrs. A. Bert Pruitt.
