Ludwig Armstrong Beckman House

This historic home in McClellanville is often referred to as the William Beckman Home for the village’s first merchant, William Peter Beckman. Beckman, who operated a store after the Civil War on the lot where the Deerhead Oak now stands, built his home nearby on the same street. This house was built either at the end of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the twentieth – records claim building dates of both 1886 and 1901 – for the Beckmans. Some accounts state that the Beckmans needed a larger home for their growing family and built this home near their first one to accommodate their children. At some point one of the Beckmans’ sons, Ludwig Armstrong Beckman, acquired the home for his own family.

Known as “Lutie” by those familiar with him, Ludwig Armstrong Beckman was a farmer who grew rice and owned nearby Blackwood Plantation. An avid sportsman, he was also was the superintendent of the Santee Gun Club, now part of the Santee Coastal Reserve, in 1905. Today the Ludwig Armstrong Beckman House remains a private residence.

The Ludwig Armstrong Beckman House is listed in the National Register as the William Beckman House as part of the McClellanville Historic District:

The McClellanville Historic District contains a collection of approximately 105 residential, commercial, religious and educational properties dating from ca. 1860 to ca. 1935. This collection is architecturally significant as an illustration of the founding of a pineland resort village and its development into a small but stable year-round commercial fishing village. McClellanville begin in the late 1850s as a summer retreat for St. James Santee and Georgetown planters. The prevailing vernacular forms, especially the central hall farmhouse, predominated in early McClellanville architecture, although the more fashionable architectural styles began to receive attention and can be seen throughout the town: Carpenter Gothic, Queen Anne, and Italianate with a rare Colonial Revival example. The commercial strip developed in the early 20th century and are of frame construction built directly on the road. The historic district is visually unified by the nearly ubiquitous wooden frame construction, by the consistent scale of the house, lots, and their relation to the banks of the creek, by the tremendous live oak trees that permeate the town, and by the relative absence of contemporary commercial intrusions.