Southern Bell Administration Building [81 St. Philip Street]

Description

B&W photograph of the Southern Bell Administration Building (81 St. Philip Street):

a: View of the front of the building possibly soon after construction.

b: Switchboard operators at work, presumably in the building and likely by Howard R. Jacobs.

Several wooden houses were demolished in the late-1930s for the construction of what may be the finest early-20th century office building in Charleston. Atlanta’s noted classical architect Philip Trammell Shutze designed several hundred buildings for the Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company. For this commission Shutze studied Savannah and Charleston architecture, particularly the work of William Jay, to design a public building in keeping with local architecture. The original portion of the Southern Bell Building consists of three stories with a rusticated ground floor set above a basement with lunette windows. A Doric-columned portico shelters the entry to the building. Upper-story windows, separated by belt coursing, feature semicircular heads and, on the second story, Greek fret panels beneath the sills. The latter features seem strongly derived from the William Mason Smith House at 26 Meeting Street, now even more positively attributed to Jay. Later horizontal and vertical additions have severely compromised the integrity of Shutze’s design, but its essential beauty remains intact. (Poston, The Buildings of Charleston.)