William Enston Home

The William Enston Home, a complex constructed between the initial acquisition of the property in 1882 and 1933, is significant as an early example of benevolent and philanthropic efforts to provide housing for the elderly. Funded by an 1859 bequest from William Enston, an Englishman who immigrated to Charleston in the early nineteenth century, the home was intended to house the aged and infirm in a manner similar to the home in Entston’s native Canterbury. As such, the William Enston Home may be the oldest such complexes in the South. The home was established on the north end of the Charleston peninsula on the former Storen farm. The initial portions of the Enston Home complex were built between 1884 and 1888, with additional buildings and structures built in 1893, 1927, and 1933. The site consists of 27 buildings, 2 structures, and 12.1 landscaped acres. With its neat rows of detached double cottages set amid spacious landscaped grounds, the Home provides an unusual and well-preserved example of nineteenth century picturesque suburban-planning concepts adapted to a charitable and institutional function. It is also locally significant as an example of the Romanesque Revival style, rare in Charleston.