Qualla: Woodrow Wilson Boyhood Home (Columbia, South Carolina)

Woodrow Wilson Boyhood Home (Columbia, South Carolina): Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ProfReader, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2020, the museum changed its name. For nearly nine decades, the house at 1705 Hampton Street had been the Woodrow Wilson Boyhood Home, opened to the public in 1932 to honor the 28th president, who lived there as a teenager from 1870 to 1874. Wilson, whose father had served as a Confederate chaplain, who as president screened Birth of a Nation at the White House, and who oversaw the resegregation of the federal civil service, was not a hero whose story sat easily in modern Columbia. So Historic Columbia made a quieter, more honest move. They kept the house. They kept the Wilson name. But they renamed the institution the Museum of the Reconstruction Era at the Woodrow Wilson Family Home - and that small change shifted the entire focus from the president to the period.

Image: ProfReader | CC BY-SA 3.0

Woodrow Wilson Boyhood Home (Columbia, South Carolina): The Only House They Ever Owned

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Florencebballer, Public domain. The house was finished in late 1871. Joseph Ruggles Wilson, a Presbyterian minister, had brought his family to Columbia to teach at the theological seminary. The Wilsons lived in the house for four years before Joseph resigned his post. It was the only house Woodrow Wilson's pare...

Image: en:User:Florencebballer | Public domain

Woodrow Wilson Boyhood Home (Columbia, South Carolina): Saved from Demolition

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Abductive, CC0. By 1928, the house was scheduled for demolition. A grassroots preservation movement - mostly women's clubs and civic groups - stopped the wreckers and opened the home to the public as a museum in 1932. It became one of the first house museums in South Carolina. For decades it foc...

Image: Abductive | CC0

Woodrow Wilson Boyhood Home (Columbia, South Carolina): Reinterpretation

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Florencebballer, Public domain. Historic Columbia bought the house in 1967. In April 2009, a long three-phase renovation began with structural repairs to the aging frame. By 2012, a new support building had been added, with a catering kitchen, restrooms, and mechanical rooms. Renovation finished in 2013. When t...

Image: en:User:Florencebballer | Public domain

Woodrow Wilson Boyhood Home (Columbia, South Carolina): One of the Few in the Country

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Abductive, CC0. When the 2020 name change was announced, Historic Columbia's spokesperson explained that the new name better described what visitors actually experienced inside. The Museum of the Reconstruction Era at the Woodrow Wilson Family Home is one of the only museums in the country dedic...

Image: Abductive | CC0