Tags: Architect.
John A. Kay was one of the primary architects in the building of the South Carolina State House in Columbia South Carolina in the mid-19th century.Kay was born in England in 1830. In the early 1850s he married Mary E. Hewitson the sister of his business partner Ralph E.B. Hewiston. By 1854 he was living in Columbia South Carolina and was a master Mason in Richland Lodge #39. He became involved with the construction of the South Carolina State House in 1854 first as Peter H.