Building the Beautiful City

No two cities in the United States are exactly alike, but very few stand out quite like Charleston, South Carolina.

Here, the streets become an open-air museum where passersby can slow down, look around, and take in the beautiful architecture, which has been dutifully preserved for centuries and yet is still comfortable and luxurious enough to call home.

As one local designer can attest, Charleston’s residents have long debated the correct balance of preservation, restoration, and innovation in the city. But the conversation has never lost sight of one principle: Charleston’s architecture must remain beautiful, not only for the people who own the houses, but for all the people who live or work in—or visit—the city.

Andrew Gould, a Charleston designer who has worked on a number of residential buildings in Charleston’s historic district and elsewhere in the area, understands this better than most.

For more than 20 years, Gould has lived in the city designing both sacred and commercial spaces, as well as many houses. His projects include his own beautiful home on Catfiddle Street in the historic Elliotborough-Cannonborough neighborhood, and Revival Street, a tidy cluster of six colorful buildings now used for vacation rentals and a storefront.

Andrew Gould

East of Charleston, on Sullivan’s Island at the entrance to Charleston Harbor, stands another remarkable feat of large-scale, detail-oriented design: Mugdock Castle, a former Gothic-style church transformed into a home. Its owner asked Gould to design an addition that would look older than the church itself, and the resulting Romanesque-inspired building has become one of the chief landmarks of the island.

Gould’s appreciation for intricate details, eye-popping colors, and idiosyncratic designs—all while paying respect to Charleston’s architectural traditions—is a perfect match for the unique city, apparently designed to simply make its residents happy.

And the city’s dedication to the preservation of beauty has had its intended effect: Newcomers continue to flock to Charleston, where many, including Andrew Gould himself, believe that a city is most vibrant when it is teeming with life.

Andrew Gould

“The reason people want to live here, and the reason tourists want to visit, is that Charleston is a city of beautiful buildings. That makes their appearance a collective public interest. I don’t think very many American cities understand that the quality of our buildings is the value of our city and part of what makes our city worth living in.”

Andrew Gould

Andrew Gould

“But part of it is simply a good composition. The house should be well proportioned, with regularly spaced windows and windowpanes that match those proportions. It is all these things adding up to a good, deliberate design—doing each thing with consistent intentionality so that each building has character and integrity and speaks with one voice.”

Andrew Gould

Andrew Gould

“Over the course of 20 years, that bias against new traditional architecture has disappeared from the city’s governance. The board and elected officials are now enthusiastic about new buildings that fit Charleston’s traditional character. I would say that battle is won.”

Andrew Gould

Andrew Gould

“But Charleston is filling back up. There are a lot more tourists, and the city is full of life. I love that. A lot of people complain that it’s getting crowded, but the fact is the city is finally getting back to the way it was in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was crowded and full of life. I think that’s how a city should be.”

Andrew Gould