Fireproof Building

The Fireproof Building stands at 100 Meeting Street, on the northwest corner of Washington Square in Charleston, South Carolina. Also known as the County Records Building, it was completed in 1827 to the design of Robert Mills, the nation's first domestically trained architect and an early advocate of fire-resistant construction, and it was built to hold the office and records of Charleston County. It is a two-story masonry structure on a tall stone basement, with an arcade of round-arch openings, Doric porticoes to the north and south, and brick stuccoed to resemble stone, in the Greek Revival style. Inside, an oval stair hall lit by a cupola carries stone stairs cantilevered through three stories. It was the most fire-resistant building in America when it opened and is believed to be the oldest fire-resistant building there today. After an extensive renovation it reopened in 2018 as the South Carolina Historical Society Museum.