1530-C Main Street
2026 Palladium Tour | Life on Main Street
1530-C Main Street
After receiving its charter in 1892 with local businessman Edwin Wales Robertson [1863-1928] as president, the Canal Dime Savings Bank commissioned architect Gadsden E[dwards]. Shand [1868-1948] to design a building unlike others seen on Main Street. Shand, then at the beginning of his career, purportedly modeled the facade after a bank in Cincinnati, Ohio. Construction began and was completed in 1893. According to The State, “the building is a great addition to the appearance of Main Street, and its imposing front is a standing testimonial to the merits of Columbia granite as a building stone.” Despite looking rustic, the building featured “all modern conveniences,” including electric call bells, annunciators, “fancy lamps, combination gas and electric light fixtures.”
Despite several years of positive press, the Canal Dime Savings Bank closed in 1898, and three other banks subsequently purchased and operated from within this building. From 1936 until the mid-1990s it was owned and operated by Eckerd's Drug Store. Eckerd’s extended and renovated the main floor, which featuredglass cases lining both walls that carried the latest in prescription drugs, cosmetics, and cigars. To the rear was a forty-two-foot soda counter that also served light lunches. Although the store did not advertise, as some did, that restaurant service was for whites only, this practice was maintained throughout the Jim Crow period.
In March 1960, Eckerd’s was the location of a lunch counter demonstration by Black civil rights activists. Inspired by four students from North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, North Carolina, young protestors, including Allen University student Simon Bouie and Benedict College student Talmadge Neal, were forcibly removed. Both Bouie and Talmadge were arrested and charged with breach of peace; Bouie was also charged with resisting arrest. The case Bouie v. City of Columbia subsequently made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court before being dismissed shortly before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Lunch counters across downtown finally desegrated, albeit quietly, in 1962.
In 1995, Ray Carter purchased and rehabilitated the building, making it one of the first in a decade’s long renaissance of Main Street. His preservation efforts reversed the first-floor facade changes made by Eckerd’s, including infilling new granite to compliment the historic materials remaining on the second and third stories. Since that time, the main floor has housed the City Center Partnership [today’s Main Street District], and following a recent renovation designed by architect Tom Savory.
In the video below, Tom discusses his design influences and use of the golden ratio. While the majority of the space is sleek and modern, Tom chose to leave areas of the Eckerd's flooring exposed to pay homage to the site's significant past; this includes the inlaid entryway and the location of the lunch counter bar stools at the back of the space near the kitchen.
