USA > South Carolina > Spartanburg County > A history of Spartanburg county > Part 20
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Bright Lights, On April 23, 1890, the Spartan gloated : "Electric Better Streets lights blazed brilliantly forth April 17. Gas lamps look now like poor affairs." A body of citizens serenaded the con- tractor, Alexander Leftwich, at the Merchants' Hotel, as an ex- pression of their gratification. There were fifty arc lights on the streets, and within a few weeks fifty additional arc lights at an an- nual cost of $80 each had been contracted for by the city council.
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For many years the muddy streets and roads occasioned discus- sion and ridicule. During rainy seasons in winter, traffic was almost suspended. In the seventies there were times when men in high-top boots could scarcely make their way across Main Street. Wagons and carriages stuck in the gummy mud and sometimes remained un- moved for two weeks. Tradition persists in perpetuating the story that, during the late seventies, a mule drowned in the "Red Sea" which was Main Street between Church and Liberty Streets. In 1882 the city was very proud of its one mile of paving. The city budget for 1890 and 1891 indicates the great stress then placed on street work. In 1894 the city charter was amended, one important section providing for an enlargement of the powers of city council "to close in, pave, widen, repair, open streets and sidewalks." In 1901 the city issued what were designated as "Street Improvement Bonds," with a face value of $50,000, and bearing interest at 41/2 per cent. By 1908 Spartanburg claimed to have the "best paved streets in the South," and as having expended within the preceding ten years $300,000 on street improvements. In 1909 Dr. T. H. Law pronounced Spartanburg "the most beautifully and thoroughly paved city in all this region." All of the chief thoroughfares were macadamized and the sidewalks paved with cement. Main, Church, and Magnolia Streets had been straightened and widened and graded before being given a hard-surface treatment. The Herald of June 12, 1912, said :
But a few years ago Morgan Square was the assembly ground for the wagon trains from North Carolina and other distant points, and nightly the neighborhood was illuminated by camp fires and lanterns. Today the Square is a paved court, having for its center a handsome fountain and park in which flowers spell the words, "Spartanburg, City of Success. . . "
In 1919 the city contracted for a paving program which resulted in the hard-surfacing of Howard and Union Streets and of Morgan Square.
Traffic and
In 1884 Tanner's and Gentry's livery stables pro-
Transportation vided those who did not have their own horses and vehicles with public transportation to Glenn Springs or Garrett Springs, later called Rock Cliff, or to any desired destination. In 1890 Blowers' livery stable advertised, for Converse College stu- dents, a special bus service "from the city reservoir, along Church
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and Main Streets," guaranteeing safe transportation at the same prices street cars would charge.
In 1892 the Spartanburg Gas and Electric Light and Power Company, chartered by Alexander Leftwich, Andrew E. Moore, and H. E. Heinitsh, initiated a street railway system, and the Spar- tan, June 15, 1892, chronicled the appearance of the first street car, which ran from the railroad crossing on Main Street to Pine Street, presumably drawn by a mule, for a week later the same paper an- nounced the arrival of a dummy engine and an open coach to super- sede the "solemn-looking mule." On August 3 the paper contained caustic comments on the dummy engine which, after distressing smoke and sputtering, had blown up Sunday afternoon on Magnolia Street. Two weeks later the dummy was reported still "laid up for repairs," with no prospect for a new one.
Meanwhile, the Spartanburg Belt Electric Railway and Trans- portation Company had been chartered by D. E. Converse, John H. Montgomery, Joseph Walker, T. C. Duncan, M. W. Coleman, in December 1891, "with the purpose of building electric railways from some point on the North Carolina line toward Forest City and Rutherfordton to Glendale and Clifton, to Cedar Springs, Paco- let Mills, to Glenn Springs ; and to connect at convenient points with the Lockhart Shoals Railway, the Charleston and Western Carolina Railway, and to consolidate with other railroad companies."
After controversy, criticism, and compromises in connection with the electric railway, eventually the Spartanburg Railway, Gas and Electric Company built a road extending to Glendale, Clifton, and Saxon, and with tracks in Spartanburg passing through Main Street from the railway station to Pine Street, and along Church Street throughout its extent. In 1906 this company had fifteen miles of track and ten trolley cars; and amusement parks at Glendale and Rock Cliff provided objectives for picnics and pleasure rides.
Nothing affords a clearer view of the sudden spurt in the city's growth and the range of its undertakings during this period than a comparison of its treasurer's reports for 1890 and 1891. The actual expenditures for the fiscal year ending October 20, 1890, amounted to $19,754.22. The next year the amount was $35,815.03.
A Fourth The State legislature passed an act, December 23,
Courthouse 1889, authorizing the Spartanburg County Commis- sioners to purchase a new site, condemn lands if necessary, and erect
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a new courthouse, and to issue bonds, to be known as "Court House Bonds," up to $50,000. The commissioners were authorized to sell "the present courthouse" and appropriate the proceeds to the new one, retaining use of the old until the new was completed. They were further permitted, at their discretion, to levy a tax instead of issuing bonds, if in their judgment such a course seemed better. This they did.
On February 3, 1891, the old courthouse was sold for $15,150 to the T. C. Duncan syndicate, a group which had already purchased the old Palmetto House at the corner of East Main and North Church Streets, and which had replaced the hotel with a block of stores known as the Palmetto Building. The courthouse was in due time replaced by a building named the Duncan Building. To make way for this building, one of the loveliest specimens of architecture Spartanburg ever had was destroyed.
The new courthouse was built on Magnolia Street, on the former home places of Simpson Bobo and T. O. P. Vernon. May 22, 1891, the cornerstone was laid with proper ceremony, and in March 1892, the building was turned over to the county commissioners, who pro- nounced it "an ornament and honor to its people."
Formation of Cherokee County
In the midst of prosperity the county received a severe blow when Cherokee County was created, with Gaffney City as its seat of government. Gaffney City was in- corporated in 1875, on the site of Michael Gaffney's trading post and racing path, less than two miles from Limestone Springs. It was the largest town in Spartanburg County.
In 1868 William Jefferies, Esq., and Dr. John G. Black led an unsuccessful effort to organize a new county of which Gaffney's, as it was then known, should be the seat of government. In the seventies, eighties, and nineties, other efforts were made, until finally, in 1897, Cherokee County was created-with a large and richly historic section of Spartanburg and smaller segments of Union and York counties combined to make up its area of 373 square miles.
Public Buildings In 1903 the city council ordered the destruction of in Spartanburg the Opera House, the pride of the city for more than twenty years. This was done to make possible the widening of Main Street for paving. The building was not sold until 1906 and brought $12,123, the city reserving the clock and bell, which were installed in the courthouse tower. The lot on which the Opera House
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stood was sold to the Masonic Temple Corporation, chartered in 1907, but it was 1928 before the Masonic Temple now occupying the lot was erected. The new City Hall was built in 1914. To make way for it, the picturesque county jail, built in 1823 of soapstone and field rocks from quarries in the Tyger River area, was destroyed. A new jail was erected on a lot adjoining the new courthouse. Jail Street was renamed Wall Street.
Spartanburg had its first Federal building in 1906, at Walnut and North Church streets, built at a cost of $75,000. The Harris Theater, on North Church Street, with a seating capacity of 1,500, was built in 1907 to fill the place of the opera house. A Young Men's Christian Association building was erected on Magnolia Street in 1907. The building on East Main Street was put up in 1914.
The Kennedy In October 1882, a deed of gift to the city of Spartan- Library burg was executed by Mrs. Helen F. Kennedy, widow of Dr. Lionel C. Kennedy, for a thirty-foot lot facing what is now Kennedy Place, and was conditioned on the city's building on it within five years a suitable library room to be called the Kennedy Library. The donor named as trustees P. F. Stevens, James H. Car- lisle, Daniel A. DuPre, T. Sumter Means, C. E. Fleming, and John Earle Bomar. The lot thus donated had been the site of Doctor Ken- nedy's office. Mrs. Kennedy also donated to the library her hus- band's valuable collection of books. A two-story library building was erected, and a large, handsomely furnished room in it soon be- came a popular meeting place for small organizations.
In 1903 the city council made an agreement with the agents of Andrew Carnegie, in compliance with which the council pledged to make the library an annual appropriation of $1,500, and bought, for $7,000, the Blake lot on Magnolia Street as a site for a new building for the Kennedy Library. Carnegie donated $15,000 for the con- struction of this building, which was completed in 1906.
Hospitals The first steps toward a public hospital were taken in 1904, when the city council voted an appropriation of $50 a month for six months to aid the Spartanburg Hospital. In 1905 the Spar- tanburg Hospital was incorporated with a capital stock of $5,000, the incorporators being H. R. Black, J. L. Jefferies, and George W. Heinitsh. In 1907 the capital was increased to $25,000 and a building was erected at 162 North Dean Street. That building, after the
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erection in 1920 of a county hospital, became the Georgia Cleveland Home.
Other hospitals were being privately operated in the city. The Good Samaritan Hospital was opened in 1907 on Forest Street, in a building erected in 1854 for the Spartanburg Female College. In 1914 this building was taken over by the United States Public Health Service for use in the first pellagra investigations conducted under its auspices. The Good Samaritan Hospital was moved to the large brick house at College and Magnolia Streets, originally built as the residence of Joseph Wofford Tucker, the first president of the Spar- tanburg Female College. In 1916 the Steedly Hospital Company was incorporated with a capital of $50,000, and erected at 320 East Main Street the building later bought by the Young Women's Chris- tian Association and afterwards converted into an apartment hotel, the Wellington. Two hospitals for Negroes were operated in privately owned buildings, the People's Hospital on South Liberty Street and the John-Nina Hospital on North Dean Street.
New Many new churches were erected during this period. The
Churches Roman Catholics, in 1883, built St. Paul's on North Dean Street, a replica in miniature of St. Patrick's in Charleston. In the late eighties the congregation of Central Methodist Church erected a brick building at a cost of $14,000. The Presbyterians built at East Main and Liberty Streets a brick church costing over $10,000. The Baptists, in 1902, sold for business purposes their brick church of the seventies with its "towering white steeple," and at a cost of $60,000 built a pressed brick structure at East Main and Dean streets.
Under the leadership of Dr. S. T. Hallman, the Lutheran de- nomination, September 28, 1902, organized a church in Spartanburg with seventeen charter members. In 1907 the Woman's Memorial Lutheran Church was completed at a cost of about $8,000 and dedi- cated October 20. May 1, 1905, the Associate Reformed Presby- terians organized a church here with twenty charter members, and the following year paid $3,250 for a lot at East Main and Advent Streets, building on it in 1909. In 1911 the Greek Orthodox church was built, at the time said to be the only church of that faith between New York and Atlanta. In 1917, at Union and South Dean Streets, the Jewish Synagogue, B'nai Israel, was erected. All of the older denominations built on the outskirts new churches or missions, sev- eral of which were to become strong churches.
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The most spectacular church ever built in Spartanburg was El Bethel Methodist Church, erected in one day, May 1, 1912, at South Church and Logan Streets. At the time this building attracted nation- wide publicity. A moving picture feature was made of it. Hundreds of spectators watched the operations, which began on a cleared space at seven o'clock in the morning and ended the same evening with a religious service in the building-completed even to a coat of paint. Although the church has since been added to and altered, it is always spoken of as the "One-Day Church" and is popularly regarded as a landmark.
Building and The city of Spartanburg was almost rebuilt in the last Business years of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. The week of October 8, 1890, was designated as "A Gala Business Week," and was marked by important land sales and a "Business Carnival" in the Opera House. During this week eight building lots on Fairview Avenue were sold at prices ranging from $208 to $975. A tract, beginning on Chinquapin Creek, and known as the "old shooting-ground field," was sub-divided along Oakland Avenue and several lots on it were sold at prices running from $154 to $404. Six lots in what had been the "Dean Grove," east of North Dean Street, brought from $404 to $520. All of these lots were sold by the front foot. Four lots, each containing more than one and a third acres, "opposite Mr. Converse's new residence," on Pine Street, brought more than $800 each.
The spectacular entertainment called "A Business Carnival" was given in the opera house, the seating capacity of which was 600. After an audience of more than 800 had been jammed into it, many were turned away. To enumerate the sponsors and their representa- tives would be to catalogue all of those socially or financially great or near-great in the Spartanburg of the period. Mrs. C. E. Means was general manager. The variety program was characterized by brilliant costumes, gay music, and catchy or timely verses written for the firms represented.
At this period Spartanburg experienced a transformation of resi- dential into business areas. Magnolia street had become, in the fifties, a leading residential street on which stood stately homes surrounded by beautifully planted grounds. One by one, beginning about 1890, they were replaced by public institutions or office buildings. The Mag- nolia Street School (1889), the new courthouse (1892), the new
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Carnegie building for the Kennedy Library (1905)-these three led the van. Some of the loveliest homes the city ever had succumbed to this march of progress. Before many years Magnolia Street had become entirely a business street from Morgan Square to the railway station. On Church Street, also, business began to encroach on the dwellings of older citizens. Elegant new residences went up along East Main Street, Pine Street, and some of the newer short streets, which were being opened up or extended over the city. In 1906 the farming area that is now Converse Heights was opened for resi- dential development.
During the period many privately owned mercantile buildings and warehouses were erected. The Southern Railway built a new pas- senger station costing $25,000. The long-dreamed-of railroad, which was to connect Charleston and Cincinnati, became, in 1909, a reality, and, October 29, its first trains brought in guests and excursionists and occasioned speeches, banquets, and barbecues. Later trains were to bring it what was of greater importance-coal from the fields of Kentucky and West Virginia.
On January 5, 1910, the contract was let to erect a
The Confederate Monument Confederate monument at the intersection of South Church and Henry Streets. Funds for its erection came from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Sons of Confederate Vet- erans, newspapers, the city council, and school children. The corner- stone was laid August 17, 1910, in the presence of more than three thousand persons. Colonel T. J. Moore acted as master of ceremonies on behalf of Mrs. C. E. Fleming, president of the Spartan Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy. Captain Charles W. Carlisle, at that time ranking officer of the Confederate veterans of Spartan- burg, delivered an address. Mrs. Charles Petty deposited in the cornerstone the following : lists of members of the Spartan Chapter and of the Children of the Confederacy ; a copy of "The Confederate Veterans' Edition" of the Herald, August 17, 1910; two copies of the Journal of the same date; and some coins. The monument, com- pleted January 21, 1911, is forty feet in height and is surmounted with the figure of a Confederate soldier. The granite column that supports the statue was originally intended to be used in the building of the capitol at Columbia, and was given to Spartanburg by an act of the State Legislature. Every year on the 10th of May brief exer- cises are held at the monument, when some outstanding citizen delivers
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a brief eulogy on the Confederate dead. The women place laurel wreaths at the base of the shaft, and the school children scatter about it flowers.
A Confederate Reunion Spartanburg entertained the Annual Reunion of the Confederate Veterans of South Carolina, August 17- 19, 1910. The Veterans in attendance numbered about 2,500, besides the many Sons of Veterans present. The meetings were held in the Harris Theater on North Church Street, at that time the largest auditorium in the city, with a seating capacity of 1,500, and it was filled to overflowing at all the exercises. Three welcoming addresses and responses were made : on behalf of Camp Joseph Walker, Charles Petty welcomed the visitors, and was responded to by State Com- mander General B. B. Teague of Aiken; H. B. Carlisle represented Camp Oliver Edwards, Sons of Veterans, and A. L. Gaston, of Chester, responded for the visiting sons; Colonel T. J. Moore wel- comed the Red Shirt Men of Seventy-Six, and the response was made by J. C. Stribling of Pendleton. Colonel U. R. Brooks of Columbia was the orator of the day at the opening joint meeting of these three organizations. The city and the local organizations were hosts at a dinner on the courthouse lawn. Mrs. C. E. Fleming, president of the Spartan Chapter, U. D. C., threw open her house for a reception to visiting ladies on the second day of the Reunion. On that day addresses were made by W. C. Pritchard, a former commander of the Virginia Division, U. C. V., and George B. Timmerman, a former commander of the South Carolina Division. In the evening an enter- tainment in the Converse College auditorium was provided for all the visitors. Polk Miller was the attraction offered. The same evening a ball was given in Ravadson Hall by the Oliver Edwards Camp, Sons of Veterans. This ended the entertainment provided officially for the visitors, but on August 19, a railroad excursion to Altapass at nominal rates enabled those who wished a trip to the mountains to gratify their desires.
Cotton Mills An especially important step taken by Spartanburg citizens was the organization of two companies to erect cotton mills within the city limits. The Spartan Mills, of which Captain John H. Montgomery was made president and treasurer, was organized in 1888 by local capitalists with a capital stock of $150,000. Soon, however, the original plans were modified and Northern capitalists were enlisted in the enterprise, the capital stock being increased to
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$500,000. The list of directors included W. E. Burnett, A. H. Twichell, J. B. Cleveland, D. R. Duncan, among others.
All the brick used in building Spartan Mills, nearly five million, were made in Spartanburg The company acquired sixty acres of ground and erected one hundred and fifty neat four-room cottages. The directors named the village "Montgomeryville." The new mill was the pride of the city, having a smokestack which was the highest in the State, and believed to be the only round one in the South. This stack measured 40 feet in diameter at its base, and was 178 feet high. When it was finished, Mrs. Montgomery had a sumptuous turkey dinner served to the directors on the platform which surrounded the top. From this elevated viewpoint they were able to think of them- selves as seated at the very center of the Hub City, and to survey its spokes stretching in all directions.
"One dreary rainy dismal day" in 1890, as Ed McKissick told it, a Spartanburg business man, J. H. Sloan, put on his rubbers, took his umbrella in hand, and set out to raise subscriptions on stock for a cotton mill that would provide additional employment for the inhabi- tants and would utilize the waste products of the mills already estab- lished by making them into ropes, bags, and cotton bats. In a few hours he secured more than the $50,000 he had set as his goal. As a result, Beaumont Mills was incorporated, with Sloan as president and treasurer, and, as directors, Joseph Walker, V. E. McBee, J. E. Reynolds, W. F. Bryant, C. E. Fleming, J. B. Cleveland, H. A. Ligon, and R. L. Cumnock After a brief period of operation this mill was enlarged and equipped as a standard cotton mill.
T. H. Law in the Spartanburg Herald of August 22, 1909, made the statement : "Spartanburg city with its numerous resident mill pres- idents has become a center of cotton manufacturing larger in its opera- tions than that centering in any other single city in the South." There were then in the city limits, or on its outskirts, the following mills : Arkwright, Beaumont, Crescent, Spartan, Drayton, Glendale, Clifton, Whitney, Saxon Mills. The presidents of these and several other mills in the county resided in Spartanburg.
Boasts June 25, 1912, the Herald issued a "Booster's Edition," which was also something of a boaster's edition, enumerating and describing Spartanburg's six banks, four hospitals, one theater, one vaudeville house, four motion picture houses, six building and loan associations, twenty-four passenger trains daily, twenty-five churches,
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nine public schools, three parks, a country club, and 414 automobiles. The paper gloated over the annual production of 75,000 bales of cotton in the county, and over the county's being the State's leading mule market, with an annual business of a half-million dollars.
In the fall of 1912 the Chamber of Commerce instituted a drive for $15,000 for civic improvement. This campaign brought to public attention various appellations given the town by Spartans themselves or their friends: The City of Smokestacks and Education, the Hub City of the Piedmont, the Lowell of the South, the Athens of South Carolina, the City of Wideawakes, the City of Success. This last phrase was, during a long period, accorded a semi-official status. There was a park in Morgan Square with the words, "Spartanburg, the City of Success," in floral design on its green sward. The Herald used the tag at the end of its editorial column every day. The Cham- ber of Commerce printed the legend on its stationery. When, in 1916, the Chapman Building-today the Andrews Building-rose into the air eight stories, Spartans pointed proudly to "The Skyscraper" as one more evidence that theirs was a City of Success.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Education and the Arts
Educational Leadership
Undaunted by the loss of the Spartanburg Female College and the removal of the Episcopal Theological Seminary, the people of Spartanburg pressed forward in their pro- motion of educational activities. They entertained the first State Teachers' Institute; they supported Wofford College Lyceum As- sociation; they encouraged the founding of a new female school- Piedmont Seminary; they instituted an excellent graded school sys- tem; they founded Converse College; they promoted and supported the South Atlantic States Music Festival; they furnished the pio- neers in two forms of adult education, night schools for illiterates and the Textile Industrial Institute.
First State Teachers' Institute
In welcoming to Spartanburg and Wofford College the members of the first "Normal In- stitute" held in South Carolina, James H. Carlisle said: "This is the first time in the history of our State that one hundred and fifty teachers have met under the same roof." This meeting came about through the active cooperation of the faculty and trustees of Wof- ford College, State Superintendent of Education Hugh S. Thomp- son, and the trustees of the Peabody Fund for the Promotion of Education. The enrollment reached two hundred, half the counties of the State being represented.
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