USC Abandons It's Southern Roots In Renovations
Gone With The Wind
Gone With The Wind
(Clyde Wilson, Reckonin’) - At the University of South Carolina is a striking classical Greek building known as the South Caroliniana Library. It was built in 1840 by the outstanding architect Robert Mills and was said to be the first American college building for a separate library.
The building anchors one side of the open end of a “horseshoe” of sturdy dignified buildings all built before the War for Southern Independence. Antebellum South Carolina College was intended to be and was a strong, recognised institution with an internationally distinguished faculty. The Library contained rare materials, including a first edition Audubon.
The Library escaped Sherman’s fires but South Carolina College did not escape Reconstruction and suffered the same decline as its impoverished state. In the World War II era some insightful people who loved their State, led by Robert Meriwether, formed a South Caroliniana Society. The Society was allowed to take over the Library for the keeping of its assiduously collected historical materials.
The Library thus for decades became busy as a major…