Fritz Porter Design Services is best known for creating layered, highly personal residential interiors, where every material, furnishing, and detail contributes to the way a home feels. So when the opportunity arose to work on Le James, a Charleston event venue with a storied past, the project presented an intriguing departure from the studio’s typical work.
Rather than approaching Le James as a traditional commercial space, the vision was to give it the warmth, character, and collected quality of a beautifully appointed home. Historic architecture, thoughtful references, performance-minded materials, and pieces with personality came together to create a venue that could feel intimate and established while remaining flexible enough to transform for each event.
We sat down with the Fritz Porter Design Services team to talk about the inspiration behind Le James, the history that shaped the design, and the details that helped bring the space to life.
Creating a Venue That Feels Like Home
Q: Le James is a departure from the types of spaces Fritz Porter Design Services typically works on. What was it about this project that sparked your interest and made you want to be part of it?
While it is true that we mostly focus on residential design, the directive for Le James was to design a space that felt like an elegant downtown home. So many event spaces are sterile, and the team wanted to create a hybrid - a space that felt like a well appointed house or boutique hotel in the common areas and lounges, but had a “blank slate” in the actual event rooms that could be transformed in any way needed.
Q: When you first walked through the venue, what elements of the space inspired your vision, and how did that influence the overall design direction?
We were lucky enough to partner with Young and Wales Architecture for this project, and we both agreed that keeping the historic architectural elements of the building such as the exposed brick, arched doorways, large divided light windows, was important. We also wanted to honor the building’s history of being first a warehouse, then the Colony House Restaurant, and finally the Harbor Club. All of these iterations of the space felt important to respect and highlight.
Finding Elegance in the Details at Le James
Q: The finished space feels both elevated and welcoming. What were some of the key design principles you focused on to create that balance?
This was actually quite challenging given the strict rules of the BAR and ADA and other regulations required for commercial spaces. Nothing evokes elegance like fire doors, bright Exit signs, and exposed electric panel boxes! But we just accepted those things and designed around them the best we could. For example, adding skirts to the ADA compatible sinks in the restrooms was a nice way to make the space feel elevated, without sacrificing the handicap accessibility. Wallpaper was another important design element that helped create a more elegant feel in the entire project. The main lobby features a beautiful sepia toned scenic paper from Zoe Designs, and that sets the tone for entire space. We also focused on sourcing the best materials we could find within the budget we were given.
Q: Throughout the project, how did you decide which furnishings, finishes, and design details would best support the atmosphere Le James wanted to create for its guests?
Everything we used had to have a purpose and had to withstand potential heavy use. Performance fabrics, contract carpet tiles, vinyl wallpaper in the bathrooms, cleanable finishes, and elegant lighting were key. We also added simple drapery panels in almost every room to help absorb sound in lieu of less attractive acoustic tile. It was a delicate dance, but in the end, we accomplished the look we were going for.
Connecting Past and Present
Q: Looking back at the completed venue, what design moments or details best capture the FPDS approach, even in a project that differs from your typical residential work?
One of things we try to do in every project is to make the space feel very personal for whomever lives there- it is their home, not a FPDS design. That is always the goal. In this case, there is a revolving door of who uses the space, so we accomplished this by adding references to spaces that the owner loved- such as Ralph Lauren’s Polo Lounge in New York, a chic Yacht Club,, the lattice walls inspired by Dorothy Draper’s design of the Greenbriar Hotel, and even the Ladies Lounge at the Bennett Hotel here in Charleston. There are nods to all of these places throughout the project. The other thing that was important to us, was to create a tie to the building’s former life as the Colony House and the Harbor Club. We were given a box of scrapbook items such as menus, matchbooks, newspaper clippings and countless photographs. We framed a bunch of them and hung them throughout the space to create a thread between the past and present.
