REID BURGESS has long been enamored of Palladian architecture. As a child, he fell in love with it during a visit to Italy, and as a teenager, growing up in a Chicago suburb, he used to make elaborate drawings of villas for his high school crushes.

One drawing depicted a Mediterranean estate with a large auto court; he named it after a girl called Lauren. Another was a little neoclassical temple with a black-and-white color scheme; he called that one the Black Pearl and gave it to a girl named Jenny.

Now, at 33, Mr. Burgess has finally built a grown-up version of his childhood fantasy. He calls the two-story house, which is about 870 square feet, the Smallest Palladian Villa in the World. And fittingly, he owns it with his girlfriend of 15 years, Sally Eisenberg, 33, an accountant who is as petite, at 5-foot-5, as he is tall (6-foot-4).

“She’s my muse,” Mr. Burgess said. “She loves small things and small places.”

Mr. Burgess, a professional mandolin player who lives in Brooklyn with Ms. Eisenberg, was inspired to bring his dream to life in Charleston, S.C., after reading an article about the work that George Holt, a self-taught designer, has been doing there. Mr. Holt, who started a firm called New World Byzantine with Andrew Gould, another designer, has spent the last 20 years restoring old homes and building new ones with a medieval aesthetic, and in the process has helped revitalize rundown neighborhoods.