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Maggie Cookman September 27, 2000 The Reid House was designed by W.G. Clark
and Charles Menefee and built in John’s Island, SC in 1986. Menefee and Clark
designed primarily in the American South. Clark and Menefee are known for their
“tripartite vertical organization.” The base level normally consists of
secondary bedroom(s)/studio spaces and services.
The First floor is a “piano
nobile of principal rooms with a double-height living space.” The attic level
usually consists of the master bedroom and bath. The Reid House is set up in
this fashion. The house is located in a modest setting, surrounded by house
trailers and cheaply built houses.
The image of the house was “derived from
vernacular farm buildings as well as from more formal Palladian structures.” One
author described the setting as “John’s Island, a peaceful landscape where truck
farmers tend tomato fields carved out of scrub-pine and dwarf-cedar forests, and
where the front yards of shacks are littered with junked cars, rusting
agricultural machinery, and other decaying impedimenta of the Industrial
Revolution.”
The house is a three-story tower with two components. The first is
a 20 ft. sq. section made of concrete block, housing the living and bedrooms,
referred to as the “served space(s).” The second part, referred to as the
“serving space(s),” is a wood-frame shed that holds the kitchen and the
bathrooms. These two components are “joined at the fireplace and chimney, around
which the stair winds.”
The materials used for the house are inexpensive, in
keeping with the surrounding structures. One section is made of concrete blocks,
exposed on the inside and covered with waterproofing paint on the outside. The
other part of the house is “sheathed in plywood and battens and its roof is
covered in asphalt shingle.” The floors are painted pine, the interior
partitions, painted plywood.
The total cost of the house was $102,000, only
$2,000 over the budget that the Reids had set. They wanted the house built
because they wanted to move their two small children out of a trailer home, and
they wanted to have a larger space in which they could manage their 120-acre
horse farm. The total area of the house is only 1600 sq. ft.
One author noted
that the house “[reconciles] lofty aspirations and modest means.” W.G. Clark is
not a native to Charleston. He worked for six years for Robert Venturi before
going to work with Charles Menefee on the Middleton Inn for Charles Duell.
This
project was Clark’s first major work, and was more in tune with the work of
Peter Eisenman. Charles Duell, a Middleton descendent, dreamed up the idea of
the Middleton Inn, 15 miles outside of Charleston. He envisioned a guesthouse
and conference center, and planned on seasonal guests who came for flower
festivals and other annual events.
The Inn was remote from city tourist
attractions, and Clark “capitalized on this and made it a rural retreat in the
woods.” The Inn was filled with Charleston details, which helped to bridge the
gap between the city and the rural hideaway in the woods. These details included
terra-cotta chimney pots, wooden shutters, stick-style furniture, special stucco
called “slave coat,” and Charleston Green paint, which accentuated the building
in the midst of the trees and growth in the surrounding woods. Clark and Menefee
exemplified an uncommon American virtue, restraint.
Their structures had a
simple and clear formal order, and were compact in plan. Their belief was that
generosity was achieved in section. In describing their architecture, one critic
notes that Clark and Menefee’s buildings “distil a didactic language through
which both formal meaning and construction can be revealed and understood.” It
was also said that their houses were “idealized pavilions sitting solidly on the
site in the classical manner.”
Their designs were small and succinct, and
interior finishes were sometimes rough, but their craft was excellent. Clark and
Menefee succeeded in practical designs, while economizing on budgets and space.
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