Library, Senior Housing, and Refectory

Historic Renovation of a Library, Senior Housing and Refectory

Mepkin Abbey is located forty-five miles northwest of Charleston, South Carolina. The historic 4,000- acre property, founded in 1681 as a rice plantation, was acquired in 1762 by Henry Laurens, the first President of the Continental Congress. It was later purchased in 1936 by Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, and his wife Clare Boothe Luce. In 1949 they gave the property to the Trappist Cistercian monks of the Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky, who established a new monastery there.

The Clare Boothe Luce Library is one of the current building projects by the monks at Mepkin and is designed for scholarly research and as a repository for their collection of theological works and rare books. BTR also completed a new senior housing building and remodel of the refectory.