The cupola is a distinctive architectural detail on several of Charleston’s Revolutionary-era buildings. The small. circular structure gets its name from Italian “little cup”, and was a popular Venetian ornamentation made popular in Neo-classical designs based on Andrea Palladio’s Four Books of Architecture. The cupola is designed for a dual purpose – to give a building beauty and to help ventilate the structure. The crowning little cup adds a delicate dimension to the architecture, and by opening cupola windows, warm air is released from within. Here in Charleston, the combination of looking good and keeping cool was always a major influence on architecture, and cupolas began to appear shortly before the Revolution in buildings such as the Old Exchange, the Josiah Smith house, and the John Ashe house. The cupola at the Ashe house once overlooked docks along South Bay, now South Battery and Murray Boulevard, and legend says that a light was used as navigation for ships.