The Forgotten Rain Porch

This freestanding architectural feature is known to some as a “Carolina porch"

Photo of an abandoned home with a rain porch by Tom Poland

By

Tom Poland

A reader and friend, Zilphy DuRant of Florence, South Carolina, mailed me a letter and clipping from The Post and Courier about an architectural feature I’d never heard of, rain porches. In the clipping Seth Taylor wrote about the Pee Dee being the “birthplace of a porch unlike any other.”

Driving back from Chapel Hill, I saw a road worthy of my ramblings. In one of those life coincidences I came across what appears to be a house with a rain porch on North Carolina Highway 79, which runs through Gibson, North Carolina. Zilphy, by the way, hails from Gibson.

Just a few miles across the South Carolina state line I spotted what seemed like a rain porch on an old house missing its porch. Even so, it was obvious that the columns went to the ground and beyond where the porch would be. As Taylor wrote, “The columns aren’t attached to the floor; they’re freestanding.” So were these.

Now I’ll admit this so-called rain porch may simply be supports for ongoing restoration but its columns go straight to the ground and the columns themselves seem as old as the house. This rain porch will do until another one comes along, and it did.

Near Cassatt, South Carolina, on old U.S. Highway 1, I found a rain porch off the road a ways. Problem was it looked too modern, all bricked up as it was. Cassatt does, however, have a classic rain porch house, the two-story, circa 1820 McCoy house. I aim to find it next time I’m driving old U.S. 1 north of Camden.