Drayton Hall

Seven generations of Draytons held this plantation house on the Ashley River before handing it to the National Trust in 1974. The National Trust's mandate since then: keep it in near-original condition, not restore it to someone's later vision of what it should have been. That decision makes Drayton Hall singular — the only plantation house on the Ashley River to survive both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars intact, a Palladian structure that has outlasted the earthquakes and hurricanes that took its outbuildings, still standing on its own terms.