Home to the government of the U.S. state of South Carolina, the South Carolina State House rises in Classical Revival style in front of you. Here sit the South Carolina General Assembly and the offices of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor, and until 1971 the building also housed the Supreme Court. It rises in the Classical Revival style: approximately 180 feet tall, 300 feet long and 100 feet wide.
It weighs more than 70,000 short tons (64,000 t) and contains 130,673 square feet (12,140 m2) of space — numbers that help you feel its civic presence. Beneath this current shell lies a longer story. The old State House was constructed between 1786 and 1790, designed by James Hoban, the young Irishman who emigrated to Charleston after the Revolution; on Henry Laurens's recommendation, President Washington later engaged Hoban to design the executive mansion in Washington.
Old pictures show architectural similarities. That old building was destroyed during the burning of Columbia in 1865. The present house was designed first by architect P. H. Hammarskold, and today it still stands near the corner of Gervais and Assembly Streets.
Gervais and Assembly Streets meet near its corner, and these Classical Revival lines replaced Hoban's old State House, destroyed in 1865.