The Bricks Under Your Feet

The Bricks Under Your Feet Hero Image

This article was written by Brandon Inabinet and originally published on May 9, 2018. This information and images were provided by Julia Cowart in Furman’s Special Collections and Archives.

The Old College from the Furman campus, the Shack from the Greenville Women’s College.

These are the two obvious structures from Furman’s historical campuses. But, deconstructed, the walls of these places are all around us. Bricks in the circle in front of Judson Hall are from Ramsey Art Building of the Greenville Women’s College. Bricks in the circle between the Bell Tower and the Old College are historic bricks from the old campus, like from the old Bell Tower itself. The bricks in the Rose Garden are perhaps the most well-documented.

Mrs. Plyler planned the rose garden in the 1950s. Even though it was reported in student newspaper articles in 1958 and 1960 that the rose garden would not be constructed until the student union center was completed (Watkins Student Center completed in 1965), it appears that the rose garden was completed in 1961.

Sheree Wright in Facilities Services indicates that the rose garden was completed in 1961 for a total cost of $17,500.

In the President Plyler Papers, I found a contract from November 1964 for demolition to start on the downtown campus, specifically the demolition of Old Main, the Bell Tower and the Stack. The contract indicated that the contractor was to bring 20,000 handmade bricks from the Bell Tower to the new campus. So it appears that the rose garden pathways were built before the demolition of the oldest buildings on campus.

It appears that not all of the brick made it to the new campus, since it was reported in the Summer 1965 Furman Magazinethat June Williams Collins ’40 had moved into a new home built of brick from the Old Furman Bell Tower. Brick was also used for a large living room fireplace and one wall of a screened porch.

 

We have in our Memorabilia collection two bricks that are described as being from the Old Bell Tower on the old men’s campus.

Also, an alum also gave us two commemorative bricks from the downtown Furman campus.

In “the cage” of Cherrydale Alumni House, we have far more examples of bricks and mortar from the Old Main building downtown. As Andy Teye wrote in a separate post, it is clear these bricks were formed by hand and mortared by “boys,” who were contracted laborers, likely both slave and free.

The new PocketSights app tour of campus notes some of this information, although our specific information is constantly changing as we learn more. It’s exciting to think that every day we get closer to knowing the hands that made our campus, and the distance between their labor and our appreciation grows closer.