1200 Blanding Street
Greyhound Bus Station
Designed by George D. Brown in 1939, this building is Columbia’s finest example of the Streamline Moderne style of architecture. Completed for $75,000, this addition to downtown offered people living through the Great Depression hope through modernity. Materials, such as glass block, cadet blue and ivory-colored Vitrolite panels, aluminum and stainless steel, provide a look equated with speed, efficiency and industrial prosperity – characteristics all befitting a then-modern bus station. Despite this forward-looking aesthetic, the facility featured segregated spaces for black and white customers until the mid-1960s. This property remained a transportation hub until 1987, when Greyhound and Trailways Lines, Inc. merged and moved to a larger facility on Harden Street. In 1995, the National Trust for Historic Preservation acknowledged the property’s architectural significance by including the site in its official preservation month poster.
