Court House Square is the location of Charleston County Courthouse in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, USA, at the intersection of Meeting and Broad Streets. It is historically known as "the four corners of law" because the intersection hosted buildings from each level of government: the Courthouse (state law), City Hall (municipal law), the Federal Building and U.S. Post Office (federal law), and Saint Michael's Episcopal Church (canon law).
Charleston County Courthouse (1790–92) was designed by the Irish-born American architect James Hoban. President George Washington visited Charleston in May 1791, may have met with Hoban, and summoned the architect to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the temporary national capital) in June 1792. The following month, Hoban was named winner of the design competition for The White House in Washington, DC.
The Courthouse itself is still in use, located in the historic district near the park at Washington Square. It was built on the site of and incorporated the ruins of the South Carolina Statehouse (1753, burned 1788), the capitol building for the Colony of South Carolina under British Rule.
Famous quotes containing the words court, house and/or square:
“When a man’s feeling and character are injured, he ought to seek a speedy redress.... My character you have injured, and further you have insulted me in the presence of a court and large audience. I therefore call upon you as a gentleman to give me satisfaction for the same.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If the physicians had not their cassocks and their mules, if the doctors had not their square caps and their robes four times too wide, they would never had duped the world, which cannot resist so original an appearance.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)