Tommy Wilson's Neighborhood

Tommy Wilson's Neighborhood. . Drawn in 1872, Camille Drie's bird's eye map of Columbia tells a lot about the neighborhood in which the Wilson family settled. Details include their property with its main house, kitchen building and a small outbuilding. On neighboring plots to the west stood the Fisher and Bachmann houses and the towering Nickerson Hotel. The Lorick House (ca. 1840), immediately east, and the Chesnut Cottage (ca. 1855) to the southeast still stand today., Evidence suggests the drawings of Andrew Jackson Downing may have influenced the design of the Wilsons' home. This well-known, 19th-century architect promoted harmony between buildings and nature through his widely circulated pattern books. The Wilsons hired Gustavus Theodore Berg, a German immigrant draftsman, to make construction documents. Consulting with Jessie Wilson, Berg produced an Italianate villa plan, a style Downing promoted as a "country house of a person of competence or wealth… with some taste and elegance." The efforts of Wilson, Berg and local builder Robert W. Johnson resulted in a fashionable addition to the neighborhood between October 1871 and early 1872., The Wilsons enjoyed their stylish residence for only a little more than two years before they relocated to Wilmington, North Carolina.