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The Jail and Marine Hospital in Charleston. From "Ballou's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion," 1857. Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.J. Important Institutions in South Carolina | History of SC Slide Collection
Though we celebrate individuals and families as the keystone of our society, and celebrate the communities in which the individuals live and work, it is often institutions that bridge the gap between the individual (or family) and the community. Institutions are the way in which we organize ourselves to achieve commonly held goals. Education begins at home--but it is the institutional structure of schools, academies, colleges, and universities that makes us an educated people. Faith is a private and individual matter of belief--but it is most often through the institutional churches that belief becomes active in the community. Communities provide hospitals, orphanages, prisons, and police and fire departments, because we value our mutual health and safety. And finally, government in a democratic republic is the institution we create to link all those institutions and ourselves together, to ensure that they work for the benefit of all of us, not just for a few. In this section of the collection you will find images of the physical structures in which institutions are housed, as well as a picture of the people that make them work.
Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.
Within this Series
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Museums as institutions help citizens identify with their past. This "Relic Room" was maintained in the State House until the completion in November 1935 of the War Memorial building on Sumter Street...Photo
The scarcity and value of books made the establishment of libraries an important early cultural institution. This Pineville Library Society bookplate, designed by the Pineville Academy to identify and...Photo
Not all baptisms were held out of doors. Laura Glenn Douglas (see Laura Glenn Douglas) painted this interior of an African-American Baptist church around 1938. Courtesy of the South Carolina State...Photo
Tuberculosis was a serious disease of the 19th century that claimed many lives. Known also as "consumption," it was highly contagious, as well as requiring complete rest for recovery. South Carolina's...Photo
The Charleston Orphan House was founded in the late 18th century, but the main building pictured here was constructed between 1853 and 1855. The city abandoned the building in 1948 in favor of less...Photo
South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute in Barhamville, just north of the city of Columbia, was opened in 1829 to offer women a higher education. It was sketched in about 1860 by M. Dovilliers, who...Photo
The South Carolina Penitentiary, the Central Correctional Institute, was founded in 1865. This 1910 postcard view shows the prison building and hospital. Courtesy of the Howard G. Woody Postcard...Photo
The Charleston Museum, one of the oldest in the nation, had its beginnings as a collection of scientific specimens by the Charleston Library Society in 1778. By 1843, the collection had been...Photo
The Greenville County Library operated a bookmobile in the 1920s that was used by both African-American and white students. Courtesy of the National Records and Archives Administration.