Qualla: Allen University Historic District

Allen University Historic District: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Four years. That is how long Allen University waited after the University of South Carolina formally barred African Americans in 1877 before laying the cornerstone of its own permanent home in Columbia. Ministers of the African Methodist Episcopal Church had founded Payne Institute in 1870 to teach freedmen and their children to read, write, and preach; in 1880 they moved the school to the capital, renamed it for AME founder Richard Allen, and bought ground on what would become 1530 Harden Street. The first major building went up in 1888. The four red-brick structures that ring the campus green today - finished between 1891 and 1941 - are the architecture of a refusal: the refusal to wait for permission, the refusal to ask the state to teach Black children what the state had decided Black children would not be taught.

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Allen University Historic District: A Campus the State Would Not Build

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Abductive, CC0. The Allen University Historic District covers Arnett Hall, the Chappelle Administration Building, Coppin Hall, the Joseph Simon Flippen Library, and the Canteen Building. Together they are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, added April 14, 1975, and they also fal...

Image: Abductive | CC0

Allen University Historic District: The Chappelle Building

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US Department of Education, Public domain. The centerpiece of the district is the Chappelle Administration Building, which is also a National Historic Landmark in its own right - one of relatively few structures in South Carolina to carry that highest designation. It was designed by John Anderson Lankford, an architect ed...

Image: US Department of Education | Public domain

Allen University Historic District: Originally a Suburb

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Asheville Post Card Co., Public domain. When the campus was laid out in the 1880s, this was the leafy edge of Columbia - the Waverly neighborhood, then a streetcar suburb whose Black middle class built churches, fraternal halls, and family homes along Harden, Gervais, and Hampton Streets. Downtown Columbia has since wa...

Image: Asheville Post Card Co. | Public domain