Shannon Smith Stuckey House
1422 Laurel Street

Built between 1885-1890, this three-story Queen Anne style house embodies many of the tenets of late Victorian architecture popular from 1870-1900. Somewhat unique from the wood-frame houses that dominate its neighborhood, the Smith Stuckey house features red brick walls employing a stretcher bond pattern of soldier courses and a basket-weave effect that add dimension to the building's facade. Neatly placed windows, whose upper sashes contain fourteen small, red and blue stained-glass panes surrounding a single, clear one, offer a dazzling display of color on sunny days. This Victorian structure also features a Palladian window in its front-facing gable and a one-story porch with projecting pedimented roof. A transom of stained glass, matching that of the first- and second-story windows, highlights the home's entrance.

During the first few years of the 1900s the property remained a single-family residence, but by 1930 Marion Morris took on tenant Johnnie Rawl, a nurse. A descendent, Miriam Freeman Rawl, wrote From the Ashes of Ruin, a fictional account of Columbia's burning during the Civil War, with the Robert Mills District featured as part of her story. Homeowner Marion Morris was widowed by at least 1935 and stayed in the home through the 1950s. By 1960, however, the South Carolina Beer Association began using the house, and ten years later the Mid-State Realty and Insurance Agency operated from there. For several years throughout the 1980s and 1990s the building was vacant and fell into disrepair. In 1995, the City of Columbia declared the property unsafe. Current owners and tenants, Nina Smith and the law firm of Smith, Ellis & Stuckey, bought the house in 2001 and began an intense restoration. In 2002, Historic Columbia Foundation recognized the property's revitalization by honoring it with a preservation/restoration award.

Staci Richey and John Sherrer

Return to Articles.