The Four Corners of the Law is a term commonly used to refer to the intersection of Meeting and Broad Streets in Charleston, South Carolina.
The term was coined in the 1930s by Robert Ripley, creator of Ripley's Believe it or Not!. St. Michael's Episcopal Church, constructed between 1752 and 1761, stands on the southeast corner of the intersection. In its churchyard are the graves of John Rutledge and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, signers of the United States Constitution. On the northeast corner of the Four Corners is Charleston City Hall, constructed in the Adamesque style between 1800 and 1804. Across the street, on the northwest corner, stands the Charleston County Courthouse, originally constructed in 1753 as South Carolina's provincial capital, the building was rebuilt in 1792 for use as a courthouse. On the southwest corner is the United States Post Office and Federal Courthouse, built in 1896. The term "Four Corners of the Law" represents the presence of institutions representing federal, state, local and ecclesiastical law on each corner of the intersection.
Famous quotes containing the words corners and/or law:
“Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.”
—Mark Strand (b. 1934)
“The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The image is in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and none of ours. We think we can lay hold of image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)