1546 Main Street
2026 Palladium Tour | Life on Main Street
1546 Main Street
Samuel W. Irwin, a civil engineer from Cincinnati, Ohio, joined other Northern entrepreneurs capitalizing on Columbia’s reconstruction efforts between 1865 and 1876. He initially completed this building as a brick, two-story, double storefront in 1871. Shortly before construction began in 1870, local paper The Daily Phoenix bluntly requested that he “put a concert hall above the stores.” Irwin listened, and the second story became a public gathering space that hosted balls, “citizens meetings,” and theatrical and musical productions during the 1870s. The earliest businesses on the ground floor were clothier C. D. Eberhardt and hardware merchants Lorick and Lowrance. Prior to the completion of its own building at 1500 (Main) Richardson Street, the Central National Bank also kept their safe here.
Renters of the northern storefront changed often, with Irwin’s wife, Martha Jane Fowler, briefly advertising her fancy goods and millinery store there in 1880. The southern storefront was occupied by Kingsland & Heath, a crockery store owned by Reuben Kingsland and the Irwins' son-in-law, John A. Heath, from at least 1880 until 1898. (Interestingly, Samuel Irwin did not leave the building to daughter Julia Heath, but instead to daughter Evaline Sutphen, upon his death in 1885.) The storefronts were remodeled with “plate glass and iron fronts” in 1898. Later renters, such as R.B. and E. McKay, dealers in “fancy groceries,” tea, and coffee, came and went until I. Silver & Brothers Co. purchased the building nearly twenty years later.
The building’s second story maintained its reception hall design throughout this period, with the primary occupants being the Elks (1901-1904) and Fraternal Order of the Eagles (1904-1916), who both furnishedthe space “handsomely.” When I. Silver & Brothers Co., purchased the building for $75,000 in 1916, president and founder Isaac Silver announced plans for a major renovation that added a third story and basement. The State reported that contractor F.D. McNulty was “practically demolishing” the storefronts, and competing paper The Columbia Record noted “the large building is being removed for a modern store ”with only some of the walls remaining.
Following more than $25,000 in renovations, the new five-and-dime opened in March 1917. The red, stucco storefront was the “most elaborate” storefront in the city, and the interior featured a dramatic, mirrored staircase up to the second floor. The company employed eighty individuals, including youngest brother Abraham Silver, and sold goods priced between five cents and one dollar.
In 1920, I. Silver and Brothers expanded to include a second storefront at 1212-14-18 Taylor Street, and in 1928 expanded its Main Street location through an addition and remodeling project costing $35,000. The store remained open except for a four-day closure period at the conclusion of the project. The updated store, which had been "rearranged, repainted [red and cream], and redecorated,” featured double the amount of floor space with nine new showrooms and twelve new departments.
In 1940, it was remodeled again, with the entire front “done over.” In addition to repainting, Silver's new facade featured new display windows backed by “birch birdseye maple—[then] difficult to obtain because of its usefulness in airplane construction.” The window trimming was done in stainless steel and black ebony marble. By then, it employed more than 150 people and featured departments ranging from shoe repair to food to prescription medications.
By 1976, Silver’s had overlaid the second and third-story facade with corrugated porcelain enamel siding that featured three symmetrically placed white panels and a stone parapet with cap. The design emulated the slipcover facades seen on several buildings along Main Street. After several minor rebrands, the store closed in the mid-1980s. In 2004, developer Tom Prioreschi’s firm Capitol Places unveiled its third project on Main Street—ten condos located on the second and third stories of the former Silver’s. The redevelopment, which took nearly two years, also restored the former storefront’s facade to its 1940 design.
Unit 203 was purchased by Michelle Kennedy and George Kennedy in 2015 and renovated in 2016 with the assistance of a Greenville-based residential designer, Mark Dullea, DULLEA + ASSOCIATES, Inc., followed by interior updates in 2026 by a Greenville-based interior decorator. The work opened and reconfigured a formerly enclosed hallway, allowing access to the primary suite from the hall rather than the living room, with the bedroom to one side and an expanded bathroom and closet to the other, improving circulation and spatial flow.
