Members of the Circular Congregational Church are proud to be one of the oldest continuously worshiping congregations in the South. The congregation was co-founded with Charles Towne, 1680-1685, by English Congregationalists, Scottish Presbyterians, and French Huguenots from the original colony. These “dissidents” erected a meeting house in the northwest corner of the walled city. By 1804 the time had come to replace the house on Meeting Street with a more spacious building. Martha Laurens Ramsay proposed a circular shape, and leading Charleston architect Robert Mills, who also designed the Washington Monument in DC, completed the plans. The church he designed was a Pantheon-type building 88 feet in diameter with seven large doors and 26 windows. On the ground floor and in the gallery, it was supposed to accommodate 2,000 worshipers. In 1838, the residents of Circular Church, as it was now popularly called, erected a New England-style bell tower that rose 182 feet above Meeting Street. The old circular church fell into ruin following a great fire in 1861 and the Civil War.....