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"C” is for Carolina I-house

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“C” is for Carolina I-house. The I-house is an architectural term first coined in the 1930s to describe the house type identified in the “I” states of Indiana, Illinois, ad Iowa. The distinguishing characteristics are a full two-story height, a one-room depth, and a length of two or more rooms. The I-house conveys a tall, narrow appearance. It is constructed of wood, brick, stone or log, with its entrance on the long side. By the late seventeenth century there were examples in the Middle Atlantic region. It was carried southward as part of the mid-eighteenth century migration into the backcountry of the Carolinas. The ubiquitous I-house became the symbol of economic success in the rural landscape of South Carolina’s upcountry by the middle of the nineteenth century and remained so well into the early twentieth century.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.