Help Save the Hutchinson House

The Hutchinson House

The c. 1885 Hutchinson House, is one of the oldest surviving homes built by an African American family during the Reconstruction Era on Edisto Island and the Edisto Island Open Land Trust is working to bring it back to life.

Jim Hutchinson purchased 404 acres of the old Clark Plantation in 1875 and began the African American settlement community, referred to as the Clark Community, on Point of Pines Road. His son Henry Hutchinson built his home there, the c. 1885 Hutchinson House, and today it stands as the last remaining home of the original Clark Community.

To learn more about the Hutchinson House, visit https://edisto.org/history/

Edisto Island Open Land Trust Plan and Progress

The Edisto Island Open Land Trust (EIOLT) purchased the Hutchinson House in 2016 with the vision to restore it to its 1885 appearance and open it to the public as a place of learning. It was a grand plan and truly visionary as the house was collapsing under the weight of time and Chinese Wisteria. Over the course of the last eight years, it has taken heroic measures to ensure its safety, a dome erected to keep the rain, wind, and as luck would have it, snow away, a temporary roof installed, the original brick piers rebuilt and repointed, and rotting wood carefully replaced. We are in the final stretch, but as we work to finish the exterior and interior restoration and preservation of the Hutchinson House, we need your help. With sky-rocketing construction costs and newly discovered structural concerns the total cost of the final push to completion will reach just over $700,000. We must raise an additional $275,000 to finish bringing this amazing representative of African American vernacular architecture back to life. We are on our way to our goal, having raised the first $75,000! Donate today to double your gift up to $50,000. 

Structural Concerns: Accomplished. THANK YOU!

Your summer 2024 donations enabled EIOLT to proceed with and finish the structural work on the internal staircase and second floor. We are one step closer to opening the entire house to the public, including the second floor where two bedrooms are located. We look forward to having visitors safely experience what it was like to live in the Hutchinson House, and commune with the memories of Hutchinson descendants such as Patty Bailey who, as a child, visited her grandfather, Arthur "Rich" Hutchinson and grand-aunt Lula Hutchinson Whaley,

 "My room was upstairs and I would look out the window and when I would look out, oh, it was such a breeze too. Beautiful breeze...I think that window was upstairs in the hall...But in my bedroom I would see the well, I would see the tree, I would see several cherries to my right and straight ahead."

Thank you!