1722-1724 Main Street
Bouchier Building
Construction of this Second Renaissance Revival style building by the Richland Construction company in 1913 resulted in the demolition of the Boyne family’s residence, which had stood here since the late 1860s. Owner Henry T. Bouchier worked with architect Charles Coker Wilson of the Columbia firm of Wilson & Sompayrac (successor to Wilson, Sompayrac & Urquhart) to design the estimated $30,000 project, which was completed by December 1913. One of the earliest tenants of what was called “one of the handsomest business houses in the city” include H.A. Taylor’s furniture store, which benefited from the structure’s show windows which The State newspaper described as “very spacious and specially designed for displaying furniture.”
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Historic Columbia collection
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Bouchier building, 1949. Image courtesy John Hensel collection, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia
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H.A. Taylor Furniture Store. Historic Columbia collection, HCF 1991.1.1
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Illustration from The State newspaper, 1913.
Charles Coker Wilson designed other Columbia buildings, including Logan School, Davis and LeConte Colleges at the University of South Carolina, and Allen University’s Coppin Hall (in association with Henry Ten Eyck Wendell). Wilson was credited as the supervising architect for Main Street’s Palmetto building, also completed in 1913. And, the Richland Construction Company, the firm responsible for building the Bouchier building, also built the Manson building two blocks south.