So here’s an old building somewhere in the state. Hint: It’s not in the Upstate. Send your best 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 Nov. 29 image, “Interesting brick building,” has been known as the Waring Historical Library since 1969. Located on Ashley Avenue on the campus of the Medical University of South Carolina, the building originally was the Hoffman Library, erected in 1894 as a gift to Porter MIlitary Academy by the Rev. Charles Frederick Hoffman, rector of All Angels Episcopal Church in New York. In 1964, Porter merged with the Gaud School for Boys and the Watt School to become Porter-Gaud.
Congratulations to several alert readers who knew what the building: Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; Philip Cromer of Beaufort; Charles P. Darby of Charleston; Larry Cannon of Simpsonville; Jacie Godfrey of Florence; Vic Carter of Lugoff; Jay Altman of Columbia; and Frank Bouknight of Summerville.
Godfrey remembers the building from student days: “It was located on the right side of the gate entrance from Ashley Avenue to Summerall Hall. I lived in that dormitory my first year while attending the Medical College of South Carolina to study radiology. After that year, we all were moved to St. Francis Hospital nursing dormitory in order to raze Summerall Hall to build the new dental school on that property. After adding that new school, the college was changed to a university, now known as MUSC. Of course the library remains in its original location!”
Peel also shared more history about the octagonal building: “According to the library’s web site, its mission is ‘to collect, preserve, and promote the history of the health sciences in South Carolina” and was “named for Joseph I. Waring, Jr., a local pediatrician and medical historian and the first director of the Historical Library.’. Apparently, the library houses some pretty fascinating (and gross!) artifacts, including amputation saws, a box of artificial eyes, bone scrapers, and other horrifying sounding surgical tools like an ‘Artificial Urethral Sphincter’ and a ‘Bermingham Nasal Douche.’ The library also includes the Macaulay Museum of Dental History, which features a collection of dental memorabilia, dental chairs and a traveling dentist’s chest of the Civil War era.
“The site of the building in the photo was originally the Charleston Arsenal, a U.S. Army facility that was seized by South Carolina State Militia at the outbreak of the American Civil War. According to Wikipedia, the Arsenal ‘was constructed in 1841 and served as a storage place for weapons, ordnance, and ammunition for the U.S. Army in antebellum days. The Charleston Arsenal produced a considerable amount of artillery and small arms ammunition during the Mexican–American War and up to the Civil War. During the Civil War, Confederate troops from South Carolina seized the arsenal in late December 1860, and held it for much of the war until it was finally retaken by Union troops when Charleston fell in 1865.’”
- 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!