Radcliffeborough (originally Radcliffeboro) is an eight-block neighborhood that was sectioned off into lots in 1786 from farm property purchased by Thomas Radcliffe. Radcliffe's widow, Lucretia, and his estate continued the development of this borough after 1806. Mrs. Radcliffe donated a prominent square of land for the site of the church of St. Paul's, Radcliffeborough, began as the Third Episcopal Church in 1811. Designed by the Scottish builders James and John Gordon, and executed by the carpenters Robert Jackson and Robert Galbraith, this undertaking was a conscious attempt to build a larger edifice than those downtown. St. Paul's served as the base of worship for a number of rice planters living in the uptown area, but it was generally surrounded by houses built by prosperous merchants and mechanics. The plantation style house at 57 Radcliffe Street, often referred to as "West Indian" in style, is an early remnant, as is 64 Warren Street, built in 1816. At Warren and Thomas Streets three prominent emigres - Justice Benjamin Faneuil Dunkin, Lawrence Edmondston, and Samuel Mills - built substantial houses in the 1820's and 1830's. The latter two dwellings feature characteristics more applicable to New England Houses of the period: recessed entries, ionic pilasters and cornices, flush siding, and boxed interior plans.

Coming Street in Radcliffeborough, like Harleston Village, was a home to several free black families before the War Between the States, and a "free woman of color" owned many of the lots on Radcliffe Street in the 1850's. Duncan Street in the same period, with a mix of single houses, cottages, and more substantial two-story dwellings, was nearly dominated by free African Americans and slaves living apart from their masters. After the war the free black elite of the antebellum period established St. Mark's Episcopal Church and retained the architect-engineer Louis Barbot to design a building with Roman Corinthian columns. Larger lots, such as those at Warren and Coming Streets, were sometimes subdivided for the construction of small single houses for newly freed slaves. Duncan Street and Desportes Court remained residential enclaves for working African Americans. Today Radcliffeborough is an economically and racially mixed neighborhood, and its stated boundaries also include former Wragg lands to the south and Elliot lands to the north.

Taken from: The Buildings of Charleston by Jonathan Poston