What style is your house? Style of architecture? Is it bungalow, Georgian, Southern Colonial?

All these are well-represented here, some by one or two houses, some by hundreds or thousands, a few by 200-year-old specimens.

For instance: Modern. The greatest American designer of the 1900s was Frank Lloyd Wright. Most of his buildings from Chicago to Arizona to Florida have become tourist attractions. Thirty-five years ago, the late Frederick Evans Sr. chose a corner on Moss Avenue and built a Wright-inspired design drafted by one of his students. It’s still there, very much in use by Mrs. Evans and just as unique now as back then.

Straight back walls and flat roof sections from the outside. Inside you pass through an entrance hall to reach a big, square well space that rises from the basement up four floors to the ceiling. You can see into nearly every room, most of which have half-open walls.

On the basement floor is a large playroom. On the second floor, the dining room and kitchen have views into it. Three bedrooms do not. A half flight up and again the beautiful living room overlooks it. One more flight up and you are in the master suite with its bedroom, baths, etc. The open well makes the house seem more spacious than it actually is.

Biggest hit in house history

The super-popular model of the 20th century was, of course, the ranch. How many does Orangeburg have? Two thousand, maybe? Infiltrating into the South from the rest of the country just a few years after WWII’s end, it now dominates whole streets -- with only slight variations. The pre-war styles tended to be two rooms wide at the front. By contrast, ranches are only two rooms deep and stretch across the entire lot, four rooms on the front and back. Their garages or carports at one end stretch them a room wider.

No use describing the floor plan on any one in Orangeburg because half of us either live in or close to one. Originally, only half or less had one of the essentials of later models. You guessed it, the fabulous innovation: air-conditioning. No longer is it necessary to sit out in the cooler “piazza” on motionless summer nights. The kids used to play all kinds of games while their mothers and daddies visited with neighbors. It was so much fun, but not nearly so gripping as the souped-up adventures, sexy romances and shoot-to-kill murders that now clutch the public to TV screens.

Before WWII, the “bungalow” ruled new house styles. It originated in England where people asked for one-story cottages, which were taxed at a lesser rate. It then became popular in India where many British migrated and the word originated. Drive up Stanley Avenue or around the park on Moss Heights or down Carolina from Broughton to the River. There they are, the bungalows of the 30s, a true housing change that slowly infiltrated into Carolina as we recovered from the 1921 boll weevil and 1931 depression scourges.

Nearly all are of brick. Before this era, only a few of our bigger dwellings had featured it. Probably a thousand of these small gabled, brick houses rose during those years.

Go turn up the heatrola

Interiors, also unique, eliminated a front hall. You entered directly into the living room, walked straight back into the dining room, then into the kitchen or into a central hall which held a refrigerator-sized “heatrola” that pumped heat into two to three bedrooms and one bath. Priced at a medium of $3,000 to $4,000, they provided many new comforts for the family. After the War, families added pipe-fed oil floor furnaces, electric water heaters and second baths. Thousands of such houses created the big and well-known suburb of Shandon in Columbia, and are still popular with second- and third-generation residents.

Before brick, wooden bungalows with wide front porches dotted S.C. neighborhoods. The former Cherry family residence on Amelia across from the back of the courthouse is a good example.

Keep in mind that for 160 years, until 1900, at least 75 percent of Orangeburgers lived on farms out in the county. As many gradually migrated to town, they erected houses similar to those they had left, “country houses” at first, very plain, one- or two-story. Then, as the South prospered before the Civil War, they included carved window frames and front doors, also rounded, one-story columns. The high, grand, two-story columns which graced some Lowcountry plantations seldom stood in Orangeburg before 1900.

But a fancier dwelling time finally came in the Victorian age, named for the 1837-1901 queen. Amelia Street still has one built by a Mrs. Bates in 1875, sold to Lawrence S. Wolfe in 1893. Mrs. Wolfe asked that they beautify the plain house with a turret on the roof (later removed), fancily carved porch railings, gingerbread moldings. etc for which builders by then had steam-powered lathes and jigsaws. Driving by and taking a look at the house, still owned by the Wolfe family, always brings a sweet feeling of the past.

Truly old, truly worth saving

For a look at one of the county’s 200-year-old country houses, you can drive seven miles out the North Road and, on the left in a cluster of huge trees, pass the Jacob Culler house. Two-story, now painted gray, it was the birthplace of Mr. Culler’s 15 children by three wives. It is now owned by Annettte and Pete Jensen.

To see the oldest Orangeburg County house still standing and the architectural skills that existed here in 1760-70, drive out U.S. 301 past the Shrine Club and look far back to the left to the two-story Donald Bruce House. No doubt very grand for early inland Carolina, this large home originally stood at the corner of Windsor and Bull streets in Orangeburg.

When the city fathers insisted they must have the lot in 1847, the Bruce heir was determined not to destroy it. No trucks or hydraulic lifts existed back then. Some ingenious man was hired to lift the entire dwelling in one piece onto any number of horse-drawn wagons and then, slowly but surely, move it four miles out of town to the present site. Many of its details are unique, including horizontal pine paneled walls and double-front doors, each of which leads to a separate room. What a wonderful adventure story this would make if we still had all the details. The late Russell Wolfe Sr. purchased the house 70 years ago.

And that’s how we built. This review does not pretend to be authoritative, but it can remind us how our ancestors often led pleasant home lives. In spite of cold rooms, cold water and endless wood and coal toting, they continued creating the American philosophy of Home Sweet Home.

Retired editor and public relations executive Thomas Langford’s column is titled “Some Edisto stories.” Let him know if you have stories to share: 803-534-2097.

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