Charleston -- Bougemont

Situated on about eight acres overlooking the Kanawha River, Bougemont was originally the estate of banker Harrison B. Smith and was named for his son, Bouge. The property features a Georgian-style mansion designed by the New York architectural firm of Ford, Butler & Oliver in 1916 and its landscape design was the work of Thomas W. Sears. Although Sears designed a formal garden to be placed near the house he also allowed much of the natural wooded vegetation of the site to remain. After Smith's death in 1942 the property was neglected until 1959, when it passed into the ownership of Horace Hamilton Smallridge, who undertook extensive restoration work and whose descendants continued to own the property until 2011, when it was placed on the market. Bougemont was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Bougemont photographs in the Archives of American Gardens include two images of Sears's landscape designs for the property, done between 1916 and 1920 when his practice was located at 1424 Walnut Street in Philadelphia. There are also on-site photographs of the house and grounds, probably taken by Sears between 1920 and 1930, since they show well-established rather than newly installed plantings.