Octagonal rooms and a freestanding elliptical staircase await you inside the Nathaniel Russell House, completed in 1808 as one of the finest examples of Adam-style architecture in the United States. Nathaniel Russell was a Rhode Island-born merchant who came to Charleston and became so successful that his peers called him "King of the Yankees. The house is celebrated for its geometric precision — octagonal rooms, a freestanding elliptical staircase that spirals three stories without visible support, and interiors of breathtaking elegance.
Russell spent the equivalent of millions of dollars building this house, and he enslaved eighteen people within its walls and grounds. Their names are mostly lost to history, but they cooked his meals, cleaned his floors, tended his horses, and made the daily operation of this household possible. Russell had no sons, and his daughters eventually sold the property.
It changed hands several times before the Historic Charleston Foundation purchased it in 1955 as its flagship museum. The Foundation has worked in recent decades to tell the full story of the house — not just the architecture and the Russells' refined taste, but the lives of the enslaved people who inhabited the same rooms. You can see their world in the kitchen building and back quarters.
The beauty of this house is real. So is its full history.