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Middleton’s inn contrasts modern against historic
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
After 23 years, reactions still are mixed over the design of one of the Lowcountry’s more unusual inn properties, which also happens to be one of the area’s more off-the-beaten path accommodations.
There is no golf course here, no shopping and no beach. It isn’t in historic Charleston and it isn’t near the airport. Yet some guests return every year to this 53-room lodge made up of a cluster of contemporary buildings that hug a wooded, 6½-acre tract of land along the Ashley River.
The modern design of The Inn at Middleton Place is what caught the eye of Deborah Plumm while she was flipping through an AAA travel magazine on her first trip to Charleston.
“I thought the architecture was so different and so wonderful,” Plumm said. “I will try anything once, and I’ve tried it 10 times.”
Plumm and her three daughters have made The Inn at Middleton Place their annual vacation spot for the past 10 years and check in every July for 10 days.
“I don’t want you to tell too many people about it,” Plumm said. “I don’t want too many people to go there, especially those two weeks.”
Abigail Martin, the inn’s general manager, said nearly 50% of the inn’s guests are repeat visitors. The inn isn’t widely advertised and shares most of its marketing efforts with Middleton Place Plantation and Gardens. It was built on part of the plantation property and in spite of its remote location, occupancy has grown 15% during the past three years.
Celebrity guests include decorating mogul Martha Stewart and actress Sarah Jessica Parker.
Not everyone is sold on the property at first sight, however.
Plumm said most visitors to the area are hoping to find something that reminds them of the 1939 film “Gone With The Wind.”
“That’s what I was looking for, but this is what I chose,” she said.
Guests sometimes are not happy when they find that the inn is not what they expected, visually, Martin said. In some cases, she has helped them find accommodations that are more to their tastes, and usually sends them to Woodlands Resort in Summerville.
“It’s a large manor house and the inn is not,” Martin said “Some people come here expecting that and when they see the property, to some it looks very cold. I often have to explain to guests that we choose to be the way we are.”
Among the visitors who fall in love with the inn are architecture students who sometimes stay as guests or make day trips just to study the buildings.
“It shows our staff new appreciation for the buildings when we get architecture students on the property,” Martin said. “They sit out here for hours and draw and sketch the buildings, the lines and the angles. They explain to us more than anyone else how unique the buildings
are.”
The Inn at Middleton Place opened in 1985 and is owned by Charles Duell, a direct descendent of Arthur Middleton, who built Middleton Place plantation and who also was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
The inn and other buildings on the property, including the Lake House conference center that opened in 1998, were built with respect to the scale, proportion, texture and even the color of nearby historical structures, even though the inn is not visible from the remains of the original house and gardens.
The contemporary, geometric inn buildings, designed by a former Charleston architectural firm, Clark & Menefee, are a stark contrast to the remains of the plantation’s 18th century manor house. Two years after it opened, The Inn at Middleton Place received the Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.
When Duell was planning the inn in the 1980s, he felt it was important not to do reproduction architecture.
“If you put a neo-Georgian building out there it would look like Disney World,” he said. “To mimic the real thing can risk making a mockery of it.”
Architect Sandy Byers of Byers Design Group said he likes the design of The Inn at Middleton Place because it is sensitive to the environment.
“I like the way there’s a lot of glass and it opens up to the views and nature,” Byers said. “I like the contemporary uniqueness of it. It’s not trying to be historic, and it’s not trying to be
Middleton.”
Byers said he thinks contemporary architecture can co-exist with the classical and traditional architecture of the Lowcountry when it is placed in context.
“You wouldn’t put that building right next to the historical Middleton house and gardens,” Byers said. “That wouldn’t work, where they’re both in view of one another, but I think the way its situated and the way it’s separated, then it can work. It’s an almost yin and yang experience, with Middleton being so traditional and steeped in history and the inn being so opposite.”
Perrin Lawson, spokesman for the Charleston Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, was assistant general manager of The Inn at Middleton Place after it opened.
“They already had the real thing in Middleton Place and didn’t need to re-create it,” Lawson said. “I thought it was a very neat concept then, and I think it still is.”
The inn, Martin said, was built purposefully as a modern counterpoint to the plantation.
“The majority of our guests have seen it online,” Martin said. “We try to make it clear they’re not getting a Southern plantation when they come here. The modern architecture is something we’re very proud of. It’s built modern, but it fits in somehow. Some like it and some don’t…but it’s the uniqueness and the history we have around us, in addition to the ambiance we offer, that seems to win them over in the end.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@setcommedia.com.
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