The STATE HOUSE,Gervais St. between Assembly and Sumter Sts., and extending to Senate St., a three-story, gray granite building of Italian Renaissance design,its hilltop park shaded by fine old trees and studded with monuments that portray South Carolina's history, has been for 75 years the center of the State's political life. Despite the substitution of the incongruous dome for the rectangular tower designed by its Viennese architect, John R. Niernsee, the State House ranks as one of the Nation's handsomest Capitols.
Begun in 1851, when the first capitol proved inadequate, its foundations were unsatisfactory. Niernsee, a resident of Baltimore, was consulted in 1854, found the work defective, and at a cost of $75,000 tore out the faulty walls and started again. Appointed architect in 1854, he moved to Columbia and construction thereafter progressed satisfactorily until war halted work. Most of the granite, excavated largely by slave labor, was hauled by wagon from Granby quarry, until a three-mile railroad was specially constructed in 1857.
Bronze stars on its south and west facades mark scars made by Sherman's shells, and heat from the flames of the old State House caused the flaking of the new building's western walls. Even Sherman spared further demolition of the unfinished structure because he admired it as a 'beautiful work of art,' according to the published journal of Brevet Major George Ward Nichols, his aide-de-camp. However, the destruction by Sherman's men of finished marble, granite, wrought iron work, and construction machinery on the grounds, with the burning of the architect's plans in the old building, represented an estimated loss of $700,000.
The structure was roofed and first used in 1869, Niernsee's death in 1885 was followed by a succession of architects and his plans were not fully carried out. Not until 1907 was the State House brought to its present state (not yet fully completed) at an approximate cost of $3,000,000. The building is 300 feet long, 150 feet wide, and 180 feet high from ground to top of dome.
The second-floor entrances, north and south, their porticos supported by 12 immense fluted Corinthian columns, are approached by monumental granite stairs. On the first landing of the north, or front, entrance,stands a life-sized bronze statue of George Washington, a duplicate of the Houdon statue at Richmond, Virginia, cast by W. J. Hubbard; the staff was broken by Sherman's men. On each side of the doorway bas-relief plaques bear likenesses of Robert Y. Hayne and George McDuffie, South Carolina statesmen of nullification days.
Inside the lobby, a niche, right of the front entrance, holds a lifesized statue of John C. Calhoun, South Carolina's greatest statesman, who served as Vice President, two terms as United States senator, and twice as a Cabinet member. The plaster figure is the model used by F. W. Ruckstuhl for the marble statue of Calhoun in Statuary Hall in the National Capitol. Adorning the lobby's marble walls are numerous other statues, busts, and commemorative plaques to distinguished South Carolinians, both men and women.
The senate chamber, in the east wing, is dominated by an oil portrait of Calhoun over the rostrum, with smaller paintings of other notables around the walls. When the senate is in session the sword of State hangs on the front of the rostrum. Made by a Charleston swordsmith in 1704, it resembles the medieval two-handed flamberge type of sword, with a silver hilt and long steel blade with waved edges. It is believed to have been in constant use since its purchase in 1704 for about $129.
The house of representatives, in the west wing, displays above the speaker's desk during legislative sessions the American flag, the State flag, and the Confederate flag; a special rack on the desk holds the gold-burnished silver mace, emblem of authority of the house. When the house files into the senate chamber, and upon state occasions, the mace is borne at the head of the procession. Made in London in 1756 by Magdalen Feline, purchased by the 'Commons House of Assembly of the province of South Carolina' for about $450, and bearing the royal arms of Great Britain, the House of Hanover, and the arms of the province of South Carolina, besides other insignia, it is reputedly the only pre-Revolutionary mace in use in the United States. In Revolutionary days it disappeared from the old State House in Charleston, was found in the vault of the Bank of the United States at Philadelphia, and restored to the State in 1819 by Langdon Cheves, a South Carolinian who that year became president of the bank.. - South Carolina: A Guide to the Palmetto State, Columbia section , pgs. 219-220
The State House is much as described in the Guide. Many state agencies which would have been located in the State House at the time the Guide was written have moved to various state office buildings that have been built over the years. As would be expected the State House is very well maintained along with its surrounding grounds. The grounds have many monuments and memorials with many added since the Guide was published.