Country Club Drive
Shingle-Style Family Home on James Island
Project: Country Club Drive
Location: Country Club of Charleston, James Island, South Carolina
Type: Family residence
Architectural style: Shingle-style architecture with Lowcountry porch elements
Setting: Bluff site between the 11th fairway and Wappoo Creek
Defining features: Cedar-shingled gables, metal roof, round oculus windows, cupola-topped den, deep columned porches
Site features: Four legally protected live oaks, cantilevered pool deck, tidal cove, river high-water line
Interior features: Folding sapele doors, barrel-vaulted media and game room, coffered ceilings, cast-stone hearth
Country Club Drive is a shingle-style family home in the Country Club of Charleston on James Island, composed between the 11th fairway and the tidal waters of Wappoo Creek.
Country Club Drive sits on a bluff in the Country Club of Charleston, a historic area with roots reaching back to the 18th century. The home's front lawn faces the club's 11th fairway, where a round, cupola-topped den looks across the lawn to the green. Behind the house, the land falls toward a cove on Wappoo Creek — a quintessential Lowcountry landscape. The design holds both views at once: the fairway in front and the tidal water beyond.
Its architectural language is rooted in the shingle style and the Lowcountry porch tradition. Cedar-shingled gables sweep beneath a metal roof, round oculus windows punctuate the walls, and deep columned porches wrap the home. These porches create a gradual transition between the interior and the landscape, mediating between the house, the fairway, the live oaks, and the creek.
The site shaped the design in very direct ways. Four legally protected live oaks became organizing elements of the plan, requiring the pool deck to be cantilevered and the home's visual axes to be carefully aligned across both the breadth and depth of the property. The property was part of a Colonial Kings grant, allowing the pool to be positioned close to the river's high-water line.
Nearly every principal room is oriented toward the property's defining views. At the center of the home, the kitchen sits between the living and dining spaces, framed by folding sapele doors that can open the house fully to the cove and the waterway beyond. When open, the doors extend the main living area into the landscape and create a continuous relationship between the interior, pool deck, and creek.
A second-floor barrel-vaulted media and game room stretches from the front of the house to the rear, offering sightlines toward both the fairway and Wappoo Creek. Elsewhere, coffered ceilings, a cast-stone hearth, and carefully detailed woodwork bring a sense of permanence and craft to the rooms.
The round den and its cupola provide a more intimate connection to the fairway, while the deep porches, pool deck, and water-facing living spaces support the family's everyday life outdoors. Together, these spaces make the home responsive to its unusual setting — a blufftop property with a golf course before it and tidal water behind.
Rooted in the shingle style and the Lowcountry porch tradition, Country Club Drive is a James Island family home shaped by its live oaks, its history, and its relationship to both the fairway and the tide.
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