In the spring of 2015 I watched a segment on CBS Sunday Morning about Auldbrass in Beaufort, SC, the only southern plantation designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Though I was familiar with Wright, I’d never heard of Auldbrass. The CBS piece noted that although Auldbrass is privately owned, it was open for public tours one weekend every other year as a fundraiser for the local land preservation trust. (That has since been increased to once a year.)
Jennifer and I decided to see Auldbrass, which led to our building a weeklong vacation around the weekend in November 2015 when tours would be available. We made plans to stay for a few days in Charleston, SC, then drive down to Beaufort County and spent half a day touring Auldbrass, and finally drove farther south and spend a few days in Savannah, GA.
Everything went as planned except for the weather; the day of our Auldbrass tour was a rainy one. We didn’t let that stop us.
I explain that a plantation in the south is any residential property containing multiple buildings. So Auldbrass Plantation is not a place where cotton or tobacco was grown in the 18th or 19th century. It is a home in the form of several structures —a main house, guest house, aviary, staff cabins, and various farm buildings. It was commissioned in 1938 and built in stages over almost 20 years until Wright died in 1959. The man who commissioned the work died three years later leaving the plantation unfinished.
Auldbrass had several owners over the subsequent decades and fell increasingly into disrepair until it was purchased by Joel Silver, the movie producer responsible for such trifling franchises as Lethal Weapon, Die Hard and The Matrix. Using Wright’s original plans, and in consultation with Wright’s architect grandson Eric Lloyd Wright, Silver not only restored Auldbrass but has added buildings based on plans and drawings that the elder Wright did before he died.
As with many of Frank Lloyd Wright’s creations, Auldbrass almost seems as if it grew up out of the ground on which it sits. Wright always took inspiration from the setting in which a building was to be located. Wright had never built in such a locale so nothing else he designed looks quite like Auldbrass. It’s set in a grove of live oaks, and among its distinctive features are downspouts modeled on the Spanish moss that hangs from the surrounding trees.
Anyone who has toured any of Wright’s buildings knows that he was a bit obsessive. He refused to include garages, attics or basements in any of his houses because he was sure they would become repositories for unsightly clutter. The most obvious of Wright’s fixations at Auldbrass is the hexagon. Not only are buildings and rooms hexagonal, but the ottoman in the living room and the bed in the master bedroom are both six-sided. The dining room features multiple hexagonal tables that can be combined to make a larger or smaller dining table depending on how many guests need to be accommodated.
At the moment the Beaufort County Open Land Trust plans to offer tours in the spring of 2021. (I expect that whether that happens will depend on the state of the coronavirus pandemic at the time.) If you decide to go, find out when tickets are due to go on sale and snap yours up as soon as they’re available. The year we went, tickets went terribly fast, though that was no doubt largely a result of the interest generated by the piece on CBS Sunday Morning.
Auldbrass is a kick. If you’re an admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright, I recommend putting it on your bucket list.