Book explores changing face of Columbia
May 15, 2019
John Sherrer, Historic Columbia’s director of cultural resources, recounted how the capital city’s history has been chronicled in a new book – Remembering Columbia – when he addressed Capital Rotary members on May 15.
Sherrer (at left in photo with Rotarians Jay von Kolnitz and Tommy Phelps) said the city was physically transformed during the years from 1860 to the 1960s.
Research into those changes was accomplished by combing through old newspaper stories, fire insurance maps, city directories, photographs, postcards and other sources. He noted that the Palmetto Club, where Capital Rotary meets weekly, was granted a construction permit in July 1960. It is located behind the state’s Supreme Court building – a former US Post Office neo-classical structure dating from 1917 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sherrer has degrees from both Clemson and the University of South Carolina. In addition to his work for Historic Columbia, Sherrer has experience at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, the National Trust’s Drayton Hall Plantation, Old York Historical Society in York, ME and Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, NH.
