Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, it's getting close to swimming time again -- the days are warming up, and the worst of the pollen will be over in a month or so. Of course, if this were 1975, it would already be swimming time at Trenholm Park.

That's right, when the pool at Trenholm Park first opened, it was totally enclosed, heated, and open year-round. In fact, I can remember swimming in that pool when there was snow on the ground. It also had the scariest high-dive board in town, and it was something of a dare to go up and off of that thing. I never would actually dive off it -- I would just cannon-ball into the 12ft section (one of the deepest around as well -- enough to make your ears really hurt).

I can guess what happened to the high-dive: insurance, but I really have no idea what happened to the enclosure. I just recall coming back to town one day, driving by and going hey, wait a minute!. If I had to guess, I would suspect some Richland County funding issue.

The last time I swam there was 1996, when I was recovering from a car-wreck, and wanted somewhere I could walk without really putting any weight on my leg. The entrance building at the front of the pool with the changing rooms and showers seemed unchanged from the 70s, so I suspect that the shell over the pool itself was always structurally separate. And despite the absence of the diving board, and a lifeguard regime that seemed a good deal more, um, authoritarian than I recalled -- the kids still seemed to be having a great time.

Welcome Facebook users 11 July 2017: I see a lot of hits on this old page from Facebook today. Welcome to Columbia Closings. Normally this site focuses on Columbia South Carolina, but there are some other Fernandina pages you may be interested in:

A1A Gas Mart, 816 South 8th Street (Fernandina Beach FL)

Amelia Con 2014, Fernandina Beach Florida

Amelia Con 2016, Fernandina Beach Florida

Island Cinema 7, 1132 14th Street (Fernandina Beach FL)

Kmart, 1525 Sadler Road (Fernandina Beach)

O'Kane's Irish Pub And Eatery, 318 Centre Street (Fernandina Beach)

Sonny's Real Pit Bar-B-Q 2742 South 8th Street, Fernandina Beach FL

Topsy's Downtown Gulf, 710 Centre Street (Fernandina Beach)

A1A Gas Mart, 816 South 8th Street (Fernandina Beach FL)

Indian River Fruit Stand, A1A (Yulee Florida)

And check the Alphabetical Closings page for other Florida references.

And now back to the original post:

Well, I'm on the road, and didn't get all the pictures I wanted to take done beforehand, so I'm going to throw in a few ringers this week.

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Well, given the events of last Friday, I suppose it's time to do a closing on South Carolina's biggest white elephant. That's the date that Hard Rock Park "chose" to move from Chapter 11 reorganization to Chapter 7 liquidation. Why?

The park, which said it was worth $400 million when it opened in April, was unable to attract any bidders willing to pay at least $35 million for the park at a Dec. 15 auction, according to court documents.

I find that amazing, even with all the other financial beef-wittery that has come to light lately. The Sun News's stories on the park are filled with comments from the locals to the effect that they could have told the owners what was going to happen, although it also appears that many people did tell them. One of the articles (which I don't have a link to right now) detailed the park's origins: Apparently the pitchmen were thrown for a loop when they were told that the Hard Rock empire was approachable for branding the rock-and-roll park they were pitching. The problem was that they weren't pitching a rock-and-roll park, but a "standard" amusement park, and weren't planning to pitch to Hard Rock, but they brainstormed some rock-related ride names on a lunch napkin and sold the concept. That's the kind of story that becomes a legend if a venture succeeds, and a cautionary tale if it doesn't...

In the event it seemed that the owners were better at promoting to corporations than to tourists, and aside from the unforseeable blunder of trying to launch a venture in the annus horribilis of 2008, they priced tickets too high ($50 + $10 parking), didn't advertise, and didn't promote with local hotels.

I had two chances to visit the park. The first was on the Fourth of July 2008, when I was taking pictures of Waccamaw Pottery. As I was standing in the parking lot, I could see the Led Zeppelin roller-coaster running in the distance, but it was about lunch time, and after that, I ended of taking a helicopter ride over the beach instead. I also had a week to myself at the beach in August, and thought about taking in the park then, but it was hot, I didn't feel like getting on 501 in tourist season, and I figured it would be better in October, but that was not to be as the doors closed in September.

Oh well, it's only rock and roll!

UPDATE: Here's a link from commenter "Beach Guy" that has the origin details I mentioned.

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Brookgreen Gardens is the famous sculpture garden established by Ann Hyatt Huntington just below Murrells Inlet in the 1930s. It has changed a lot the early days. For one thing the old style zoo with animals in concrete, steel-barred cages is long since reformed, for another it is no longer in the boonies, accessible from the South only by ferry, but is in the heart of a bustling tourist mecca.

I think that on the whole, the park organization has managed the change well while staying true to the Gardens' heritage. One of their most recent innovations is the holiday Nights of 1000 Candles which frames the Gardens' statuary and pools with light (candle and otherwise) and provides entertainment and dining among the magic settings.

These pictures were taken on the middle weekend of this year's Nights, Friday 12 December. The night was cold, though not as cold as two years ago and the skies were clear with a full moon. In the past, I have tried shooting ISO 800 film at the event with mixed results. Since I was happy with the way a lot of the 2008 State Fair closing-cam night shots turned out, I decided to try that this year. Some shots were interesting, but on the whole the results were fairly unimpressive: Neon is a lot better light than candles and pinlights. I've got a Panasonic DMC-LX3S to put under my tree this Christmas -- perhaps I'll try that next year.

Photos follow the jump.

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The Top of Carolina opened in 1967 and was the first (and I think still the only) revolving restaurant in the Carolinas. The revolving platform was built from equipment donated after the 1964 New York World's Fair. I don't know if the Capstone domitory on which The Top of Carolina sits was originally planned with that end in mind or not.

I remember it was quite a big deal when the restaurant opened (I would have been 6), and although our "eating out" was generally reserved for Sunday lunch in fairly prosaic spots (The Russell House, McDonalds, Ponderosa Steak Barn, Frank 'n Stein), my parents made it a point to take us kids.

We were fascinated by the whole "revolve" thing, and at seeing Columbia in a panarama below us. The food however, at least from a child's point of view, left a lot to be desired. As I recall, the only choice available was a buffet, and it didn't have sandwiches or hamburgers or spaghetti or indeed anything I liked. I believe my parents were less than impressed with it as well, though I may be projecting my feelings onto them. At any rate, we never went back after that one time while the place was in its initial mode of operation.

At some point -- it couldn't have been long after The Tricentennial, if indeed the place lasted that long -- the Top of Carolina folded as a retail operation. I'm not sure of all the reasons. I believe USC had always owned and run the place, and I'm sure the college "industrial food" mindset didn't help. Also, as far as I can recall, there was never a parking lot dedicated to the restaurant which can't have helped matters either.

After that, the University would still (and do still, I think) rent the place out for banquets, and I believe I attended one such function in the 80s. I can still recall noticing, and being pleased by how many trees downtown Columbia still had as I looked down on them.

Often we used the word Capstone to invoke The Top of Carolina, but actually Capstone is the name of the building on which TTOC sits. During my tenure at USC, Capstone was a girls' dorm (one of my cousins lived there a few years) with one of the University cafeterias as the ground floor. I often ate there, and vividly remeber a particular meal when ARA acted out a bad punchline come to life. I had gotten a burger and fries, and the food lady told me:

I burned the fries, so I gave you some extra.

As the comic said, if there's one thing I like more than bad food, it's more of it!.

The Capstone cafeteria was also the site of an incident which put me off of my habit of drinking tea and reading a book after eating and before my next class, something I enjoyed quite a bit. The tables were not exclusive, but generally if there was space, nobody would crowd. I was a bit miffed then when someone sat down by me and started a conversation, especially as looking up I saw that there were plenty of empty tables, but he leveraged the title of the book I was reading, got me to tell him a bit about it and started making general chit-chat. I was annoyed, but figured he was a new guy trying to make friends and didn't want to be rude, so I made an effort to be courteous and talked for 10 or 15 minutes, at which time of course he dropped the "would you like to come to our prayer group" bomb. I'm afraid that for the rest of my time at USC I was pretty uncommunicative verging on rude to anyone I didn't know taking a seat at "my" table, and didn't take up lunch reading again until I started working.

I think Capstone is still a dorm, but I believe the cafeteria is now gone. I believe you can still have a banquet at The Top of Carolina though I would still expect the view to be better than the food.

UPDATE 3 Dec 08

Commenter Dennis sends the following notes and picture:

I was always very interested in this place because of my great interest in the 1964 World's Fair, but have only managed to get in and eat once. It is impossible to get information about the rare times it is open to the public. On USC websites it is referred to as the Top of Carolina Conference Center and it seems you can only rent the place for events, but they sure don't advertise or make it easy to get info.

Anyway, I found this dated April 2007. Don't know if they ever did this renovation:

In addition to receiving that report, the University's Buildings and Grounds Committee approved a plan to use about $700,000 in Sodexho dining services funds to renovate the Top of Carolina facility at Capstone in summer 2008. The revolving restaurant atop the 18-story residence hall has been an icon in Columbia since it was built in 1967. The facility was used for 32 Sunday brunches and 44 catered University events in the past fiscal year.

"We're planning to replace carpet, window treatments, and the heating/cooling system along with making the facility ADA accessible," said Rick Kelly, vice president for business and finance.

After renovations are completed, Top of Carolina will be the venue for catered events throughout the academic year, said Michael Scheffres, general manager of University dining services. Sunday brunch at the facility is open to the public during the fall and spring semesters.

The picture conveys what I didn't really note in my initial post. The "revolve" part of the restaurant is a circular band which orbits a non-moving core. Essentially, only the guest seating rotates.

UPDATE 1 November 2009: Open again!

The Boat House at Sesqui also used to be the Bath House. I didn't swim there too often since we had access to Bell Camp, but it was an odd little setup.

The park guys in the mid-section of the building (there is, or was a counter behind those wooden shutters) would give you a wire hamper and a honking big safety-pin with a numbered stamped metal tag. You would go into the Men's Dressing Room, strip out of your clothes and put them in the basket, put on your trunks, fasten the safety-pin through them, and hand the hamper to the park guys. They would put the basket with your clothes on a shelf inside and you would go swim. After you finished, you would turn in the safety-pin, they would match it to a wire hamper and give you your clothes back. Even at the time, it seemed a rather quaint and archaic procedure.

The Boat House / Bath House, like a lot of the original Sesqui structures, was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. This was a Federal government team recruited during the Great Depression from the vast ranks of the able-bodied but unemployed. The CCC did a lot of great work on public projects, kept a lot of men off the dole and probably not coincidentally helped forestall any more Bonus Army-like incidents. I know they also built the main structures at Poinsett State Park and Florida Caverns State Park. Their work tends to have an identifiable style, and the Boat House is a good example of it. I suspect the bench alongside the structure goes back to that era as well.

I think that American youth have gradually been undergoing a "swimming wussification" over the last several generations. My grandparents' generation thought nothing of jumping into totally unimproved "swimming holes". My mother's generation were happy to swim in Hartsville's minimally improved "Black Creek". I, on the other hand, already didn't really like swimming in lakes. Bell Camp was fine since the swimming area in the section shallow enough to touch ground had had all the stumps removed and the bottom covered with sand. (Still some of my peers were irked at the way the water turned any swimsuit to yellow). The Sesqui lake was a bit too slimy for my tastes, and I didn't like touching bottom at all. I suspect the generations after me didn't want anything to do with lakes as far as swimming went. At any rate Sesqui banned swimming in the 90s, and I have to think falling demand for lake swimming had something to do with it. I read the news in The State and remarked on the end of an era though not one I had much partcipated in. I don't know if the ban was state-wide, but last time I went into Poinsett it applied there as well.

The lake is still available for fishing and walking around, but like many lakes, it has been so overtaken by filthy waterfowl, that even if you liked lake swimming, you would hesitate to thread the feces-laden-minefield from the boat house to the water's edge. Even if you could still get a hamper and pin.

Well, I suppose it had to happen, but it is rather jarring to see The Pelican Inn up for sale. Built about 1830, this landmark inn has been part of the Pawleys Island landscape forever, and has been an inn or boarding house since the turn of the 20th century and has been the locus of several sightings of South Carolina's most famous ghost, The Gray Man. It is also possibly the last inn in South Carolina not to be air conditioned!

The web site is mostly zombie now, but an archived version explains some of the place's appeal:

Our goal has been to maintain the historical feel and share
the Inn with our friends. The Guest Rooms are comfortably furnished and have a Queen and, depending on the room, one or two Twin Beds. The Rooms are cooled by ceiling fans over the beds and breezes through large windows. Guests will also notice the absence of telephones, TVs, radios and other modern distractions.

They were in the news just this year for taking on a new chef, so this closing is rather surprising. I hope that when the place sells, the new owners will continue to run it as an inn, but I don't really expect that to happen.

UPDATE 14 Aug 2009: Well, note the rental plaque in this picture:

The property is now a Pawleys Island Realty Property

This beautiful Historic Inn is located in the heart of Pawleys..Rented as an entire house it's a 10 bedroom that accomodates 24 with 6 baths. Beautiful wooded property that has with stood the test of time. Oceanfront but not ocean view with the largest creek dock on the island for crabbing, fishing, kayaking. Large restaurant style kitchen with attached dining area, Cable TV, washer and 2 dryer, Ceiling fans, Central Heat/Air.Grill. Oceanfront Gazebo with hammock. Come create lasting memories, great for family reunions and weddings.

UPDATE 25 March 2010: Good news! Check the comments. It appears that the inn will be back in business.

UPDATE 23 April 2010: And here is the Pelican Inn's new blog.

UPDATE 21 August 2010: here is the Pelican Inn's new official web site.

OK, perhaps it is a cheat to do a closing on an annual event, and doing this many pictures is certainly way into overkill territory, but I do like the Fair, and I really like neon! Some of the night pictures came out really well, some are just so-so -- the closing-cam is a circa 2001 model that is definitely not meant for anything like night available-light photography but the results are interesting (to me at any rate).

Signs of the times, I suppose, but I didn't see the video game tent anywere back in the midway this year. This may be an artifact of the new(ish) operator. I think in the old days it was Deggler, then Conklin and now American Amusements or something like that. Also, no freakshow of any kind. The had kinder-gentler freak shows (ie, no actual "freaks": "Zoma, the jungle boy!") as late as the 1980s. And I think it's been many years since there was one, but it just occurred to me this year that I hadn't seen the Bingo tent either.

These first shots are from 22 September when I took two photos down to the Cantey building to enter them in the art show. (I thought there were better than some of the stuff that got included, but in the event, both were "juried out" of the show -- oh well!). At this point basically nothing is set up except the permanent buildings (and the sky ride).

The day shots were actually taken on 19 October, after the night shots, but it seems more normal to include them here first since 'day' precedes 'night'.

These night shots were taken on 10 October from about 9pm to about closing time at 11pm. The handwriting computer has been there for my entire life (as far as I can remember anyway!) I don't think they even make the pretense that it's a 'real' computer anymore, (in the beginning, it did look very futuristic and impressive).

These final shots come from Monday 20 October when I went back to the Cantey building to pick up the photos. Almost the entire midway was already gone -- those guys work fast!

UPDATE 14 July 2009: If you enjoyed this post, you can buy products printed with some of these images at the Columbia Closings web store.

Well it seems I always get around to taking pictures of Putt-Putt locations too late. This location on Clemson Road only lasted a few years, and was completely torn up before I got around to going out there.

If I recall correctly, they had a go-kart track which was out in the area with the fire-extinguishers on the light poles. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe the actual "building" part of the "fun center" might still be standing. There is a building in the back of the area which now seems to be a welding school, but the shape of the back of it makes me think it might have been designed for a lot of in-and-out traffic to the golf course and race track.

It looks like we are to get another Interstate hotel here, which is kind of a shame, as Columbia has lots of hotels, but at this point, no minature golf courses. Or am I wrong about that? Come to think about it, the only actual working "Putt Putt" brand course I can think of is this one at the base of Atlantic Avenue in Fernandina Beach:

UPDATE 25 June 2010: Added full street address to post title. The place was actualy officially on Sparkleberry Lane, not Clemson Road as I had thought.

UPDATE 19 March 2013: Well, for whatever reason, the Wingate Inn never happened, and now, 5 years later, the parcel is still for sale:

UPDATE 9 August 2017 -- It looks like this parcel has finally, for real this time, been sold to be the new home for nearby Frank's Carwash:

UPDATE 10 August 2018 -- Now the site of the new location for Frank's Car Wash:

I didn't know Sarge Frye, though I'm sure I must have seen him out in his yard from time to time. He lived just around the corner from my sister's house, and she mentioned once that she had spoken with him back during the great Forest Acres Flood of the 90s when his property was partly under water. By all accounts, he was a very nice, and capable man and was greatly missed after his passing in 2003.

Of the baseball field which bears his name, Bob Spears of The State says:

Weldon B. “Sarge” Frye, the Michelangelo of groundskeepers, carved the field that eventually would bear his name from an unkempt patch of real estate in the mid-1950s.

The park near the corner of Marion and Heyward streets evolved and so did the Carolina baseball program.

From that humble beginning, the field lasted half a century before being retired this year. I'm afraid I would be fibbing if I claimed to have seen ball games there. Sports are not really my thing, and I don't think I've ever actually watched a baseball game (and have listened to very few since 8 April 1974). Still, the talk of closing the place caught my attention, so I thought I would check it out.

I was afraid that the field might be locked down, but as it turned out, showing up on a Friday afternoon after 5pm, in the summer when all the college kids are on break was a perfect way to have it entirely to myself. I haven't been able to find anything more definite about the future plans for the park than this 2006 story from The Daily Gamecock which says:

The current Sarge Frye Field will be demolished, and in its place will be the athletics offices, a possible hall of fame, academic support facility, sports medicine offices and a new volleyball competition facility.

If that is still the plan, they don't seem to be any hurry to "turn the lights out". It's been more than a month since the final game, but the grass is still cut, and the area still seems kept up.

The sun was at a very awkward angle for many of these shots, so if you see my fingers in the frame, I was attempting to shade the lens a bit, and since the closing-cam isn't SLR, I can't really tell from the viewfinder if they're out of the way or not sometimes.

Oh, and that final game? Let the record show it was the Gamecocks over Tennessee 10-8!

UPDATE 24 July 2010 -- Here are some pictures taken about a year later (13 March 2010):

UPDATE 20 July 2010: Here's a video from The State of the demolition of Sarge Frye Field today.

UPDATE 1 June 2011 -- Here's some pix of demolition work at Sarge Frye and The Roost on 25 July 2010:

UPDATE 10 January 2012: More construction pictures, these from 16 July 2011: