South Carolina Department of Archives and History
National Register Properties in South Carolina

Lace House, Richland County (803 Richland St., Columbia)
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Facade Left Oblique Right Oblique Interior
Central Hall
Interior
Dining Room
S1081774000206        
Interior
Ceiling Medallion

(Robertson House) The Lace House has its historic significance as part of the buildings that make up Columbia’s Arsenal Hill, a complex of fine mansions which were built shortly before the Civil War, and which furnished residences for the succeeding political and social elite of South Carolina’s capital city through the early 1900s. The Lace House itself was at one time the home of a United States senator and at another of a mayor of Columbia. The house was built on the southwest corner of the square in 1854 by a respected Columbia banker, John C. Caldwell, as a wedding present for his youngest daughter, Mary and her husband, Thomas J. Robertson. Said to have been designed by a French architect who at the time was designing homes in New Orleans, the Lace House features ornamental cornices and friezes, parquet floors and figured glass doors and windows. It is a double-porched Classical Revival mansion with Italianate details that has an English basement, bracketed cornices, arched doors, and ornate cast iron porch supports, railings and trim. The lace-like appearance of all the lavish ironwork gives the house its popular name. Listed in the National Register December 17, 1969.

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