Edward C. Jones (July 1, 1822-February 12, 1902) was a prolific and eclectic architect in Charleston, South Carolina, before the Civil War and in Memphis, Tennessee, after the war. Jones and his partner and former student Francis Lee established one of Charleston’s leading architectural firms of the late antebellum era and planned many of Charleston principal edifices of the period, including churches and civic buildings in Greek Revival, Italianate, and Gothic Revival styles. After service for the Confederacy during the war, in 1866 he moved to Memphis where he developed a practice responding to the economic growth of the New South era. He embraced new styles and technologies and designed numerous landmarks in Tennessee, Mississippi, and elsewhere in the region. He died in Memphis and is buried in that city’s Elmwood Cemetery.

Because of his prominence in antebellum Charleston, it was natural that Jones would provide designs for buildings in Flat Rock, North Carolina, which was known as the “Little Charleston of the Mountains” because of its role as the summer retreat of wealthy Charlestonians. By the 1820s Charlestonians seeking to escape the city’s sultry summers had begun make their summer homes in the cool climate of the Flat Rock area, and their numbers increased after completion of the Buncombe Turnpike in 1828. During the 1840s and 1850s, especially, many of them built their Flat Rock summer homes in various renditions of the picturesque style promoted by A. J. Downing and others, featuring steep gables and ornate sawnwork trim and porches. (Several of these were subsequently remodeled or expanded in neoclassical fashions.) It is likely that Jones planned more Flat Rock structures than have been attributed to him thus far, but two landmarks are known to be his work.

The hotel variously called the Farmer Hotel, the Flat Rock Hotel, and currently the Woodfield Inn was built in 1850-1852 by investors including Mitchell King and Andrew Johnstone of Charleston. Records of the stockholders include bills for plans ($330) to E. C. Jones and for construction ($7,000) to builder and innkeeper Henry Tudor Farmer. It is a commodious 3-story frame building with hip roof, with its ornate sawnwork porch giving a picturesque aura. Jones’s best-known work in Flat Rock is St. John-in-the-Wilderness Episcopal Church. A small private chapel had been built in 1833 by early Flat Rock summer residents Charles and Susan Baring, who conveyed it to the Episcopal Church in 1836. In 1852-1854, Jones expanded the chapel and added the tower, creating a romantic hillside composition in an Italianate style complementing its terraced churchyard. The brick church was constructed by prominent western North Carolina builder Ephraim Clayton. It remains an important center of Flat Rock life.

Not far away in Fletcher, North Carolina, Jones provided the design for another Episcopal church—this time in Gothic Revival style—for Calvary Episcopal Church of 1859. Like the Flat Rock church, it was built by Ephraim Clayton. What remains unknown is whether Jones had a role in designing any of the notable collection of substantial and picturesquely styled mountain residences elsewhere in Henderson and Buncombe counties, where wealthy families built summer and sometimes year-round homes along the Buncombe Turnpike.

• Catherine W. Bishir, Michael T. Southern, and Jennifer F. Martin, A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Western North Carolina (1999).
• “Edward C. Jones,” Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com.
• Perre Magness, “Edward Culliatt Jones,” The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.phprec=720.
• Jonathan H. Poston, The Buildings of Charlotte: A Guide to the City’s Architecture (1997).