800 Gervais Street
Former South Carolina Railroad Depot
Featuring a decorative façade, this Greek Revival and Italianate style building was built about 1850 as the South Carolina Railroad Depot.
By 1860, it was one of two depots on Gervais Street, and this portion of town was sometimes called Hell's Half Acre for the growing number of bars, brothels and boarding houses that opened nearby. In 1861, the Young Ladies’ Hospital Association established a “rest station” at the railroad depot. Known as the Wayside Hospital, it provided food and drink to soldiers and aided the sick and injured in transit. By the war’s end this hospital had treated over 75,000 men.
In 1865, Union forces burned the property. Rebuilt by 1870, the structure continued to serve in its original transportation capacity for decades. Today, the front portion of the building houses the bar Wet Willie's, while the rear, formerly Jillian's sports bar and restaurant, is still available for lease.
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This photograph of the South Carolina Railroad Depot was one of twenty taken by Richard Wearn documenting the destruction of Columbia at the end of the Civil War. Image courtesy South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina
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The rebuilt structure is depicted in the middle of the detail from C. Drie, Bird’s Eye View of the City of Columbia, South Carolina, 1872. Image courtesy Library of Congress
