There’s a giveaway clue in this photo, but you’ll have to look closely. Send your guess to feedback@statehousereport.com. And don’t forget to include your name and the town in which you live.
Our previous Mystery Photo
Our Feb. 22 mystery, “Top of building shows wear and tear,” was a photo submitted by loyal reader Bill Segars of Hartsville. It shows the top of the old Babcock Building at the former S.C. State Hospital in Columbia, or what some readers called the old Bull Street lunatic asylum!
Congratulations to all photo detectives who correctly identified this mystery: Faith Line of Anderson; Robert Ariail of Camden; Charlie Davis of Aiken; Jay Altman, Elizabeth Jones, Elizabeth Harmon and Karen Owens, all of Columbia; Gwen Strickland of Marion; and George Graf of Palmyra, Va.
Graf provided more context: “According to palmettoweekend.com: Built between 1822 and 1827, the Babcock Building was the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum housing and treating the state’s mentally ill for nearly 200 years. The last of the asylum’s patients were removed in 1990 and the site was completely abandoned in 1996, the elements have worn away at the looming structure. Once a city within a city, the 181- acre asylum property is in the process of rebirth. Just next-door to the Babcock building the Columbia Fireflies now play baseball, tech companies are moving in, a church has plans to move into the properties former power station.”
- Send us a mystery: If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com and mark it as a photo submission. Thanks.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!