Name/Title
State Office BuildingEntry/Object ID
2018.6.53Description
Postcard depicting the present-day John C. Calhoun State Office Building in Columbia, South Carolina. On the front, the postcard features an image of a large white limestone building with foliage, grass, and small palmetto trees in front of it. There is a gray 1940s car parked on the street in front of the building. The top lefthand corner of the postcard reads, "STATE OFFICE BUILDING, COLUMBIA, S.C." The bottom righthand includes the number "61837."
The back of the postcard includes a brief description of the building: "State Office Building houses all of the State’s various offices. The building is connected with the State House by a tunnel," and a center stripe acknowledging the publisher: "PUB. BY COLUMBIA CIGAR & TOBACCO CO., COLUMBIA, S.C." The postcard contains no written message and was never mailed.Subject
State Office Building, Columbia, S.C.Subject Person/Organization
John C. Calhoun State Office BuildingSubject Place
City
Columbia, South CarolinaContext
Located adjacent to the State House at 1015 Sumter Street, the State Office Building originally housed the highway department, courtrooms for the South Carolina Supreme Court, and other agency offices. Constructed in 1926, the building’s limestone material and Renaissance Revival style compliment the state house completed two decades previously.
In the early 1950s, the State Office Building was renovated and named after John C. Calhoun (1782–1850), the nineteenth-century U.S. Congressman, Secretary of State, U.S. Vice President, and U.S. Senator from South Carolina. Calhoun arguably shaped the course of the South as the champion of nullification, or the legal theory that states can defy federal laws that they regard as unconstitutional. His final speech, delivered weeks before his death, argued for the state’s constitutional right to secede from the Union over the issue of slavery.Postcard Details
Publisher
Columbia Cigar & Tobacco CompanyDate Published
circa 1945
