A morning fire devastated an iconic building whose architectural beauty and past as a mental institution in the state of South Carolina have long been characteristic of the capital’s skyline and historic folklore.
Authorities said the teams were called in early Saturday for a fire in the Dr. James Woods Babcock building, part of a former closed mental health facility that was scheduled to be converted into a luxury housing development. In the fire, the first sign of three alarms in the city’s recent history, Columbia fire chief Aubrey Jenkins told reporters that the building is likely to “burn out”.
The cause was not determined for the fire, which Jenkins said had engulfed all three floors of the structure. A fireman was reported to have suffered minor injuries from falling embers.
In the National Register of Historic Places, what became known as the Babcock Building, with its famous elevated dome and 12-sided dome, became a notable part of the downtown Columbia skyline after construction began in 1857. The video of the fire showed the dome and the dome slide out of the burning structure, collapsing into the hell below. The new building in the multi-structure complex was designed by George E. Walker, a civil engineer and architect from Charleston who came to Columbia in 1854 as the architect of the Statehouse, becoming a resident of the city, according to South Carolina Historical Society.
The central part, in the Italian Renaissance revival style, with a central gable roof topped by what would become its iconic dome, was designed by Pennsylvania architect Samuel Sloan, according to the state Department of Archives and History.
The building was named after Dr. James Woods Babcock, superintendent of South Carolina State Hospital from 1891 to 1914.
According to historian Charles Bryan, South Carolina was the first state in the Deep South and only the third in the country to create a state-sponsored institution for the mentally ill. Admitting its first patient in 1828, the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum and its nearly 80 hectares of land served as a landmark in the center of the capital, situated at the intersection of two of the district’s main thoroughfares.
Built after the determination that the original building, designed by Robert Mills, “could no longer accommodate the growing prison population”, according to the State Historic Preservation Office, the facility has already housed about 400 mental patients, all of whom have been removed in 1990. closed forever in 1996 and has been a hallmark of the complex, in various stages of remodeling for years.
Known as the BullStreet District, the campus has evolved into a variety of one of the largest mixed-use projects in the center of the country, a more than $ 100 million effort by Hughes Development Corporation in Greenville, including a secondary league baseball stadium and a office building. The 200,000-square-foot Babcock Building was planned to be transformed into more than 200 luxury apartments, with the $ 40 million development scheduled to close later this month.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, who helped lead the reconstruction project for years, to the Associated Press on Saturday. “We are resilient, but this hurts very deeply.”
Mike Bedenbaugh, president of Preservation SC, has long been involved in conversations around the Bull Street development project and, in 2008, toured the structure, climbing to the Babcock summit.
“Climbing inside that place, seeing the magnificence of the interior all intact, climbing that dome and looking at Columbia, is one of the most magnificent historic sights that Columbia has had,” Bedenbaugh told the AP. “We had hope, then, in what we wanted to do. Losing that is an irreparable loss. “
Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, transmitted, rewritten or redistributed.
The most important insurance news, in your inbox every working day.
Receive the trusted insurance industry newsletter