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© Historic Charleston Foundation
B&W photograph of the Joseph Dulles House (103 East Bay Street, front (east) elevation. (Two copies of photo in sleeve.)
Constructed ca. 1787; renovated 1930s. Joseph Dulles, the Scottish merhant ancestor of the Cold War secretary of state John Foster Dulles and CIA founding diretor Allen Dulles, built this edifice as his countinghouse and family dwelling shortly after the Revolution. Although he moved to another residence on Church Street in 1800 and thence to Philadelphia, Joseph Dulles returned and died in Charleston. His family kept this building until 1836. The records of slaves on the Dulles family plantation, Good Hope, served as the evidence for much of the theory in the groundbreaking 1970s book The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom by Herbert Gutman. When the house was rehabilitated in the 1930s by art historian Miss Anna Wells Rutledge, with the assistance of architects Simons and Lapham, the roof was raised to create the curious off-center gable, and door and garage door openings replaced the existing storefront. (Poston, Buildings of Charleston.)