William Enston Home, Charleston

The William Enston Home in Charleston is a rare Victorian-era almshouse complex that has survived largely intact. William Enston was a successful Charleston merchant and real estate developer who died in eighteen sixty leaving a substantial bequest to house the city's working-class poor, specifically those who had fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. The complex, built between eighteen eighty-seven and eighteen eighty-nine, comprises rows of modest cottage dwellings arranged around a central avenue, designed to maintain the dignity of its residents rather than warehouse them.

It represents a private philanthropic approach to poverty that was unusual in the post-Civil War South. The buildings, a mix of Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne styles, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The restored cottages still provide affordable housing, now owned by the Charleston Housing Authority.