1301 Main Street
The Palms on Main Street
The northwest corner of Main and Lady streets has been the site of at least four hotel buildings since before the Civil War. The Congaree Hotel stood here from at least 1850 until it was destroyed by fire on the night of February 17-18, 1865. The corner lot was then apparently vacant for over 20 years. Then, in 1887, Irish immigrant Jerome Fagan built the Jerome Hotel here. Fagan died in 1898, and his hotel building succumbed to a major fire two years later, on December 19, 1900. Jerome’s widow, Lillie, was determined to rebuild. Opened on November 8, 1903, the new Jerome Hotel building was designed by Columbia architect Charles C. Wilson in the Second Renaissance Revival style and built by contractor W. J. MacDonald of New York. It remained a Main Street landmark until its demolition in 1960 to make way for the Downtowner Motor Inn that opened in 1961. The Downtowner Motor Inn closed in 1983 and the building was remodeled as the Governor’s House Hotel in 1984 and then remodeled again as the Rodeway Inn in 2007. Between 2011 and 2012, the structure was remodeled once again to its current state as The Palms on Main apartments with ground-floor restaurant space.
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Colorized postcard of Jerome Hotel, circa 1915. Historic Columbia collection
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Colorized postcard of Jerome Hotel, 1912. Image courtesy Richland Library
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1301 Main Street, 1949. Image courtesy John Hensel Collection, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia
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1301 Main Street, 1970. Historic Columbia collection
