Entertainment of the most beautiful kind: the house of William and Harriet Aiken, 1833-1860

Abstract

The Aiken house in Charleston, South Carolina is one of the best-preserved nineteenth-century domestic dwellings in the city. It offers scholars unparalleled opportunities to interpret multiple facets of antebellum life. This thesis examines the material remains of William and Harriet Aikens’ entertaining spaces, with the goal of creating an overall understanding of the Aikens and the role that aesthetics and constructed spaces played within their lives. My study picks up where other scholars have left off, by making use of extant material objects that were once used within the home, along with surviving Aiken correspondence, newspaper articles, and third-party accounts. Their interior domestic spaces served to assert the Aikens’ social identity and established their home as a place for both physical comfort and aesthetic enjoyment. Just as significantly, they also helped to facilitate networks of familial, political and community relationships.