The J.B. Gilbert House in Hartsville is representative of early twentieth century industrialism in Darlington County. The home was built in 1929 by Alabama businessman John Barton Gilbert, who was recruited to Hartsville by Charles Coker to work for his business, Southern Novelty Company, later called Sonoco. Gilbert worked his way up the company, first as a salesman and finally as corporate treasurer. He also helped found the Cornish Company in 1922 and established the Joy Silk Mill in 1936, which manufactured nylon products.
The Tudor Revival home was designed by Swedish architect J. Carroll Johnson, who came to Columbia in 1910. Johnson quickly rose to prominence in the capitol city and around the state, designing structures throughout South Carolina. Johnson was best known as the architect for the University of South Carolina from 1922 until 1956.
The J.B. Gilbert House is listed in the National Register:
The J.B. Gilbert House is significant as an excellent example of an early twentieth century Tudor Revival residence; as a design of J. Carroll Johnson, a prominent Columbia architect of the twentieth century; and for its association with John Barton Gilbert (1891-1953), a prominent Hartsville manufacturer and businessman. The house was built in 1929 by Gilbert, who came to Hartsville in 1919 from Alabama, where he had been a buyer from Avondale Mills. He was brought to Hartsville by Charles W. Coker, president of the Southern Novelty Company, later Sonoco Products Company. Gilbert served Sonoco first as a salesman, then an accountant, and finally as corporate treasurer. In addition to his work for Sonoco, Gilbert helped establish the Cornish Company in 1922.
The house is a two-story brick residence with an irregular plan and asymmetrical façade. It has a cross gable slate roof with two additional lower cross gables. Tall interior chimneys have decorative chimney pots. The red brick cladding is highlighted with limestone trim, decorative ironwork, half timbering, and herringbone brickwork in the gables. An integral garage is located at the right rear elevation.
To say that J. Carroll Johnson was a Swedish architect is perhaps a misnomer. Yes, he was born in Kristianstad, Sweden, in 1882, but in 1885, at age 2 1/2, emigrated from there with his parents and elder sister to the United States, settling in Chicago. He was a native of Sweden, and while some of his design aesthetics may have been informed by his Swedish roots and culture, he was a thoroughly American, and ultimately southern architect. He grew up in Chicago and was no doubt affected by the architectural rebirth of the city following the Great Fire of 1871 which his father, Per Persson Johnsson (Peter Pare Johnson) witnessed before his return to Sweden to marry a young lady named Carolena Samuelsdotter (afterwards Samuelsson) and have a family. As a youth, he kept a scrapbook from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, “The Great White City,” with it and many other objects, documents, architectural plans, and papers having to do with his life and career now housed in a collection at the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina. He was a graduate of the Chicago English (as opposed to Latin) High and Manual Training School (1900), apprenticed in the architectural and engineering offices of the celebrated Chicagoan, Major William LeBaron Jenney (Jenney, Mundie & Jensen), “father of the skyscraper,” studied at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago, and was graduated from the Chicago Architectural School of the Armour Institute of Technology in 1906, winning the Institute’s first American Traveling Scholarship in competition, for his design of a country estate on a lake. With that scholarship in hand he traveled east making a study of mid-Atlantic and New England architecture. In late 1906 he took a position as chief draftsman in the prominent Washington, DC firm of Wood, Donn & Deming, noted for their governmental, institutional , and residential designs in and around the nation’s capital. While there and in his spare time he traveled to and from Philadelphia, earning a post-graduate degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania (1908) where he sat under the direction and tutelage of Warren Powers Laird (1861-1948) who instituted the Beaux Arts model of instruction, and the famed French designer and architect Paul Philippe Cret (1876-1945),” who directed the department of design from 1903. In 1909, Johnson traveled to Europe in the study of architecture in France and Italy. Upon his return he was offered in 1910 a position in the Columbia, SC firm headed by Charles Coker Wilson (Wilson, Sompayrac & Urquhart), where he remained until late 1912. From then until the United States’ entry in World War I, he and James B. Urquhart (Urquhart & Johnson) headed a lucrative partnership , after which Johnson pursued private practice. Except for an association and subsequent partnership from about 1936-1942 with fellow Columbia architect Jesse W. Wessinger, he practiced alone for the remainder of his career. Johnson was perhaps best known as a gifted residential designer and longtime resident architect of the University of South Carolina, the position from which he retired in 1956. He continued his private practice until about 1965, and died in Columbia, SC at age 84 in 1967.