At the famous intersection of Broad and Meeting, the institutions of city, state, nation and church stand together in an admirable example of civil co-existence. Each building occupies a corner that dovetails with the others to form a solid square of law and order referred to as "four corners."
In the center of our fair city, four corners come together to form a phenomenon that occurs nowhere else in the world. According to Ripley's Believe It or Not, this amazing configuration has been observed in Charleston and Charleston alone. Visitors view our Four Corners of Law with amazement, but for Charlestonians, it's an arrangement as old as memory itself.
When Charles Town was moved to the peninsula in the late 17th century and enclosed by a wall and moat, entrance to the city was gained via two drawbridges situated near where the Four Corners of the Law stand today. The intersection of Broad and Meeting has been central to the city ever since. Meeting Street was one of the "great streets" laid out according to Lord Shaftesbury's instructions, circa 1672. It takes its name from the White Meeting House of the Independents or Congregationalists. Before that name was adopted, the street was usually described in terms of its course, such as: "The Great Street that Runneth from Ashley River to the Market." Broad Street was just that, the broadest street in Charles Town. The street was 61 feet wide at the intersection of East Bay and 100 feet wide between St. Michael's Church and the Beef Market. Records during the period of 1698-1714 interchangeably refer to Broad Street and Cooper Street, presumably for Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper.
The four corners where Broad and Meeting cross were set apart in the Grand Modell of Charles Town for a "church, town house and other public structures" and have always been occupied by public structures. St. Michael's represents canon law; City Hall represents municipal law; the Court House represents state law, and the U.S. Courthouse and Post Office represent federal law.
Number 80 Meeting Street is the address of St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church. The oldest church edifice in the city and one of the finest Georgian churches in the United States, St. Michael's was begun in 1752 and completed in 1761. The church, with its historic bells, stands on the site originally occupied, from 1682 to 1727, by the first St. Philip's Church.
Charleston's City Hall has occupied the Adamesque-style building at 80 Broad Street since 1818. The building's first occupant was the Office of Discount and Deposit. The property had been conveyed in 1800 by the City Council to the Bank of the United States "for the purpose of erecting an Elegant Building thereon for a Banking House." The first building on this site was the Beef Market, built just prior to 1739, where it stood until 1796 when it was destroyed by fire.
The first South Carolina Statehouse was built in 1752 on the site at 77 Meeting Street and destroyed by fire in 1788. A year later, construction of the Charleston County Courthouse began on the same foundation, with the old walls and doorways retained. It was rebuilt under the supervision of Judge William Drayton, who was an amateur architect.
The U.S. Courthouse and Post Office, in the Renaissance Revival style, was completed in 1896. The "Ichonography" of 1739 shows this corner of the public square as vacant. The first structure to sit at 83 Broad Street was a Guard House, built between 1767 and 1769 by William Rigby Naylor (designer of the Exchange) and James Brown.