SC American Revolution Trust Location

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SCART is proud to preserve, protect and promote the people, places and stories that defined South Carolina’s role in the American Revolution. We’re also proud to call The Historic Robert Mills Courthouse in downtown Camden, SC our home.

The Robert Mills Courthouse
607 South Broad St., Camden, SC
*By Appointment

SCART, Inc.
PO Box 2552
Camden, SC 29020

About The Building:

Designed in 1825, the fully-restored historic Robert Mills Courthouse features a copper roof, brick floors, vaulted central hallway and double arched ceilings downstairs.  It was designed by famed architect Robert Mills and was completed on May 27, 1827.   The second floor courtroom is restored to conform to the building’s 1845 renovation. Mills, the first American-trained architect, also designed the Washington Monument and the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington, D.C.  The building is currently being used for Municipal Court.

About The Architect:

The impact that Robert Mills had on buildings in SC needs to be told, even though it’s after the Amer. Rev.

  1. Robert Mills born in Charleston SC on August 12, 1781.
  2. He returned to SC in 1820 as the first American trained architect to practice architecture in America.
  3. He designed at least 16 county courthouses in SC, 7 of those stand today.  He also designed numerous other public buildings and jails with his main emphasis on Fireproof Construction and bettering the construction industry through architectural details.
  4. In 1822 he published a transportation network, Internal Improvements of South Carolina and in 1825 he compiled an Atlas of South Carolina.  A year later he published his encyclopedic Statistics of South Carolina.  All of these publications were intended to improve his home state of South Carolina.
  5. In 1830 while fellow South Carolinian, Andrew Jackson, was the U. S. President, Mills moved back to Washington.  There he designed many Federal buildings including the Washington Monument in 1836.  Unfortunately, he never saw the Washington Monument completed as it wasn’t finished until 1885, 30 years after Mills’ death.
  6. Facing financial problems by the late 1840s and one of his favorite projects, the Washington Monument, construction halted in 1854, Robert Mills died in Washington DC on March 3, 1855 at the age of 73.  Even with all of the marble and stone structures that he had designed in his life, he could not afford a marker in his death.  He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Congressional Cemetery, in Washington DC.  The American Institute of Architects installed a marker at his grave in the 1930s.