Ward One

There are few indications that the Ward One neighborhood ever existed in downtown Columbia, aside from a street sign at the corner of Blossom and Assembly streets marking “Ward One Way.” The 1000 block of Blossom Street was given this honorary name in 2018, a half century after the Ward One neighborhood was demolished and rebuilt as part of the University of South Carolina’s campus.

The neighborhood — bounded roughly by Huger, Heyward, Main, and Gervais streets — was a vibrant, if poor, predominantly Black community throughout the late nineteenth century and into the mid-twentieth century, until it was targeted for urban renewal as the university expanded its campus. Today, it is no longer a residential neighborhood, but the site of the university’s Coliseum, Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center, Greek Village, Colonial Life Arena, Darla Moore School of Business, and several apartment buildings. Ward One is a striking example of the targeted acquisition and erasure of Black neighborhoods under the federal urban renewal program in the mid-twentieth century.

The name Ward One refers to the first voting ward that designated the area, although the neighborhood was also known as the Glencoe, or East Glencoe, area. The community formed in the aftermath of the Civil War as a working-class neighborhood that was racially diverse — the 1870 census shows that the neighborhood was 43% white and 57% Black. However, by the beginning of the twentieth century, white residents were moving out of the area or concentrating north toward Gervais Street and east of Assembly Street. The neighborhood was predominantly Black by the 1930s, with most residents working as skilled and unskilled laborers at warehouses, mills, and railroads or in domestic jobs.

Schools, churches, and businesses emerged as the neighborhood grew, including Union Baptist Church, St. Luke Baptist Church, Jones Memorial AME Church, Red Star Grocery, Jack Edwards Grocery, and Assembly Street Market. In 1916, Booker T. Washington High School opened on Wheat Street between the Ward One and Wheeler Hill neighborhoods, and Celia Saxon Elementary School on Blossom Street followed in 1929. Both were among the only Black schools in Columbia, and they attracted students and educators from across the city, providing a social and cultural hub for the Ward One community.

The neighborhood was close-knit, bustling, and economically struggling, and former residents remember a supportive community of neighbors who helped each other in need. Looking back at growing up in Ward One, Agnes Harris David understood that many people saw it as an impoverished neighborhood, but maintains, “you had to live in it to know what it was about. Everybody took care of each other. If one house didn’t have, another would give.”

Ward One was primarily comprised of small, wooden shotgun houses densely packed onto unpaved streets. In 1937, the HOLC appraisers noted that the “majority of properties are not connected gas and telephone, while many are not connected to electricity” and “in many instances outside toilets connected to city sewer serve two or three families per toilet.” Agnes Perez, who lived at 606 Park Street, remembers that “most people lived in one- and two-room houses, and sometimes, you’d have between five and 15 people in those rooms.” Many houses were deteriorating or dilapidated, which the Columbia Housing Authority deemed unfit for habitation, and residents predominantly rented from absentee landlords, while a few were homeowners.

In 1965, an analysis by the City of Columbia Planning Department indicated that Ward One was approximately 74% nonwhite, that 67% of families had an income below $3,000, and that the average years of education were 6.7, far under the citywide median of 11.3 years. More than 35% of housing units were deteriorating or dilapidated and over 15% of homes were overcrowded. The city declared Ward One the most blighted neighborhood in the city, tied in first place with the Arsenal Hill neighborhood. The planning department recommended a program of “blight elimination” that focused on education and employment; health, welfare, and public housing; code enforcement; and urban renewal. By this point in 1965, however, Ward One was already targeted as an urban renewal project by city officials and the University of South Carolina, and the neighborhood would indeed be eliminated in the next few years.

While Ward One was a relatively self-contained neighborhood, it bordered the University of South Carolina campus. The university’s enrollment dramatically increased following the Second World War, and administrators embarked on several projects to accommodate the new student population and transform the university into a premiere national institution. In the late 1950s, the university began looking at the neighborhoods surrounding campus to plan for campus expansion and turned to the “slum area” south of Blossom Street in Wheeler Hill, bordering Ward One. In 1959, the university officially requested that the city establish an urban renewal project for the acquisition of four blocks in this area, ensuring that the federal government would cover two-thirds of the project cost.

Urban renewal required the displacement of residents within the project area, which quickly became the most difficult and controversial aspect of the project. The federal Housing Act of 1954 mandated that all urban renewal projects have a “workable program” to relocate displaced residents, and Columbia City Manager Irving G. McNayr informed the CHA in 1959 that the city had enough affordable housing to relocate residents from the urban renewal area south of campus. But by 1962, the project in Wheeler Hill was facing a crisis of “no housing in Columbia available to re-locate the people” displaced. Nevertheless, officials pushed on with the additional project in Ward One, which again stalled in 1967 when the city faced a housing shortage from the additional 360 families that were to be displaced from the area. With over a thousand residents on the waitlist for housing, the CHA requested permission to build 800 more public housing units in the city.

Since most residents of Ward One were tenants, not homeowners, they had no option but to leave when their houses were condemned and landlords sold their homes, and the few homeowners faced immense pressure to sell as the neighborhood destabilized. The CHA passed a resolution in 1965 to reimburse property owners for the costs of moving expenses and loss of property value, but this applied to very few Ward One residents and renters received no assistance. Displacement was simply a necessary part of urban renewal projects, according to municipal and university officials. CHA administrator John A. Chase stated that the displaced families “will ultimately be beneficiaries of the redevelopment of the area,” despite the economic hardship placed on displaced Black residents and that the land would be used for the university, not residential development.

The urban renewal project faced some opposition from property owners, though most residents did not have the political, legal, or financial means to object. Several white property owners attempted to file legal injunctions to stop the condemnation of their property, while others complained to city officials in person. The fiercest opposition came from leaders at Greene Street Methodist Church, a predominantly white church that was to be razed in the urban renewal project. From 1967 to 1969, the church congregation organized against the condemnation of their property, attending public hearings, passing out flyers, and speaking to reporters. The church property was eventually removed from the project area, while the remaining churches in Ward One were forced to relocate and the buildings demolished.

The project also faced financial obstacles, running far over the anticipated budget. The original cost of acquisition and construction for the Carolina Coliseum, the largest project in the Ward One area, was estimated too low, and by 1969 the project was nearly a million dollars over budget. The federal government informed the CHA that some property would need to be removed from the project area, and at the end of 1969 the city settled on the purchase of 22 parcels, which was then transferred to the university and prepared for the construction of the Coliseum.

During the demolition of Ward One, CHA administrator John A. Chase encouraged “complete site clearance” of the neighborhood and the limited relocation of structures of historical significance. Displacement and relocation occurred in several stages, first with the initial condemnation of the property for the Coliseum, which was constructed in 1968. By 1970, 175 of the 198 families in the area were relocated as well as 21 of the 33 businesses in Ward One. The following year, the deed to the remaining cleared land was presented by the city to the university. While it took nearly a decade to complete, the acquisition and demolition of Ward One was relatively swift, unlike the project in Wheeler Hill, effectively erasing the neighborhood by the mid-1970s.

Campus expansion into the former neighborhood continued throughout the late twentieth century with the construction of the Koger Center for the Arts in 1989 and the School of Music in 1993 on Assembly Street. In 1994, the university’s Bicentennial Master Plan focused on expanding further westward toward the Congaree River and developing housing, academic, and recreational facilities. The university jumped into action in collaboration with the city, which created the Innovista Design District, a plan to a create “a vibrant, mixed-use urban neighborhood” to “support the continued renaissance of downtown Columbia as well as the emergence of the University of South Carolina as a nationally recognized, comprehensive research university.”

In 2002, the Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center, Carolina Center (later renamed the Colonial Life Arena), and Greek Village were constructed, and the university’s Public Health Research Center followed in 2006. The 251,891 square foot Darla Moore School of Business opened in 2014, followed a year later by the multi-block 650 Lincoln complex, a privately-owned on-campus apartment complex for students. Private apartment complexes have sprung up in recent years in the west section of campus, and in 2016, the Palmetto Compress Warehouse — a cotton warehouse that was built in 1917 and employed many Ward One residents — was redeveloped into apartments after a contentious debate between private developers and community preservationists.

But while new facilities were being built on the site of the Ward One neighborhood, former residents fought to keep the memory of their community alive. In 1991, they created the Ward One Families Reunion, a gathering of those who lived in or frequented the neighborhood. The Ward One Community Association has held biannual reunions for former residents and their descendants, as well as worked to preserve and publish the history of the neighborhood. In 2008, the city unveiled a historical marker on Blossom Street at the site of the former Celia Dial Saxon School, and in 2010, the South Caroliniana Library hosted an exhibit about the history of Ward One, led by University of South Carolina professor Bobby Donaldson. Several other university professors have worked with students to develop a mobile app detailing the neighborhood’s history through landmarks and archival materials. In 2019, the Ward One Organization, in partnership with Historic Columbia and Columbia SC 63, curated a permanent exhibit about the neighborhood’s history that is on display at the Palmetto Compress building.