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By: Sarah Moore
The Parker Annex stands on the South Carolina State Hospital campus located in Columbia, South Carolina. This building is located in the southeast corner of the campus, parallel to the corner of the brick wall bounded by Barnwell Street to the east and Calhoun Street to the south. This building is a two- story, brick vernacular structure with a metal cross -hipped roof. Although it contains a few architectural elements of a Colonial Revival such as the palladian window, overall this structure is not a noteworthy architecturally. Instead, its importance lies in the populations that it housed.
This 104- year old structure was originally constructed in order to relieve overcrowding of African-American male patients housed in a no longer existing building known as the Parker Building. The construction of what became known as the Parker Annex, however, was seen as a temporary fix to this overcrowding. By the time the Parker Annex was planned, construction was already started at a second, separate State Hospital Campus located outside of the city of Columbia. This second campus, known as the State Park Campus, was seen as a solution to this overcrowding by sending all of the African-American patients to this new campus. By 1927, much of this plan had been accomplished; with African-American male patients housed in both the Parker Building and Parker Annex were relocated to new buildings on the State Park Campus.[1]
Although the Parker Annex only housed African-American male patients for a very short period of time, it is the only free standing structure specifically built to house African- American male patients left on the South Carolina State Hospital campus. Before the Parker Building was constructed in 1898, African- American males were housed in free- standing wooden structures. These wooden structures were constructed in the 1860s and were seen as “temporary” structures.[2] These structures are only briefly mentioned in the archival material associated with the South Carolina State Hospital, often as a part of arguments for the need of a new building for these African- American patients. In these arguments, the description of the conditions of these wooden structures vary with time, with the later periods underlining the urgency of the need for new buildings for these patients: as “although comfortable, are of wood, and last of other respects are ill adapted for the purpose to which they are put.” [3] Later, concern of fire underlined the brief descriptions of these wooden structures in the State Newspaper: “The wooden lodges now occupied by them, were intended for temporary use only. They are now unhealthy, insecure, and dangerous in case of a fire” [4]
The reasoning for radical separation is needed to better understand the difficult history that the Parker Annex Building now represents. Racism underlined the belief that mental illness in African American patients was caused by different factors than in whites mainly physical differences or “peculiarities,” than those of white patients.[5] Due to these perceived differences African American patients often required different treatments than those of the white patients, resulting in a separation of housing.
In addition to these beliefs, the segregation of African Americans from the white population was seen as necessary in post- Reconstruction South Carolina because the segregation of races became a part of the law. Although segregation of races at insane asylums occurred before the Civil War, it continued into the twentieth century. On the South Carolina State Hospital campus and other insane asylums in the American South “racial segregation manifested itself in physical space.”[6] Thus the wooden structures served this purpose of racial segregation in the physical space. It also explains the continual use of these wooden structures even after concern for fire was voiced.
The Parker Building, a three and half story, vernacular brick structure with Gothic Revival influences was completed in 1898 specifically to house the African- American male population. It was located behind the Babcock building, with the façade facing towards East Lumbar Street. Though not as large as the Babcock Building, the Parker Building was a conglomerate building measuring 240 feet by 40 feet.[7] This building contained decorative architectural elements such as a turrets and towers with battlements as indicated in the picture of the building from 1905. These elements further indicate that this building was a planned building for African- American patients, not just a temporary structure.
The construction of the Parker Building did not resolve the problem of overcrowding of African- American males on the South Carolina State Mental campus as initially planned. By 1909, the superintendent cited overcrowding as a reason for a high death rate for the African- American patients.[8] The second building for African- American males to be constructed on the South Carolina State Hospital campus became known as the Parker Annex. Unlike the Parker Building, the plans for the Parker Annex were simpler, mainly consisting of a desire for a two- story, brick building. Its construction was not chronicled in articles in the State newspaper and briefly in the Annual Reports of the South Carolina State Hospital from 1909-1911, which marked only its start and completion.
In comparison to earlier structures built on the South Carolina State Hospital Campus including the Parker Building, the Parker Annex building is much smaller measuring just 7,400 square feet compared to the 42, 000 square feet of the Parker Building. While it could be argued that the reduction in size is due to the need for the building it also demonstrates a switch from conglomerate buildings to cottage plan style buildings being built on the South Carolina State Hospital Campus: “That the separate or cottage plan of buildings or wards is better suited in our climate to the needs of the insane that are the large conglomerate buildings.” [9] This switch was a part of a national trend on state hospital campus, in which smaller buildings were built to accompany the already standing large buildings.[10]
By 1926, African-American patients were moved to the State Park campus and white male patients moved into the Parker Annex on a temporarily basis. All though the state hospital planned to renovate it into an industrial shop, it continued to house male patients, including those with tuberculosis. [11] By 1975, plans were made to make part of the Parker Annex Building the site of the Step-Up Program. This program was set up to help long term male patients with personal hygiene and social skills so they might be placed in outside facilities such as nursing homes.[12] In 1978, this program in the Parker Annex included younger male patients .[13] After 1978, it is unknown how this building was used.
During this time the trend became to move patients from the state hospitals into community care.[14] By helping patients learn social skills and hygiene skills in the Step-Up program, the South Carolina State Hospital was helping them to transition of life outside the South Carolina State Hospital. Thus the Parker Annex building is representative of another important chapter in the South Carolina State Hospital and in mental history.
In 1981 the Parker Building was demolished for unknown reasons. While at present the Parker Annex still stands on the South Carolina State Hospital campus, it is currently uninhabited and is no longer used for patients. With current plans to develop the former South Carolina State Hospital campus, the future of this building is in question. In this paper I have tried to summarize the history of this building and its importance to history. Though this building represents a troubled history, it should be preserved or used for adaptive reuse following the guidelines for historic preservation.
[1] Report of the Architect dated 01 January 1927, Folder, Box 2, Department of Mental Health Collection S19002, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[2] Peter McCandles, Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness: Insanity in South Carolina from the Colonial Period to the Progressive Era. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 259.
[3] “Report of the Lunatic Asylum, November 1869,” Report of the Comptroller General to the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, 269.
4 “The State Lunatic Asylum Report of the Superintendent’s and Report of the Regent. Statistics in Comparison with Other” The State November 17, 1891 Volume 1, Issue 274, p4.
[5] McCandles, Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness, 195.
[6] Carol Yanni, The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 64. ; Also refer to “The Architecture of Racial Segregation: The Challenges of Preserving the Problematical Past” The Public Historian (2005).
[7] Superintendent’s Report dated 1 January 1898.
[8] Report of the Regents dated 1 January 1910, Folder S190002 Annual Reports 1910, Box 2, Department of Mental Health Collection S190002, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[9] Report of the Regents 1 January 1928, Folder S190002 Annual Reports 1928, Box 2, Department of Mental Health Collection S190002, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[10] Yanni, The Architecture of Madness, 79.
[11] Report of the Architect dated 1 January 1916, Folder S190002 Annual Reports 1916, Box 2, Department of Mental Health Collection S190002, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[12] Goals for the 1976-1977 Fiscal Year, Box 3, Department of Mental Health Collection S190002, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[13] Superintendent’s Report, Box 3, Department of Mental Health Collection S190002, SC Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC.
[14] Yanni, The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States, 148.