This walking tour will lead you through the streets of the Pettigru Historic District in Greenville. We would like to make this guide even better, so if you have information we can include, please add it below. Thank you!
Located east of Main in downtown Greenville, the Pettigru Street Historic District is a well-to-do neighborhood dating from the turn of the nineteenth century. Early styles range from Victorian to Queen Anne’s Revival to Colonial Revival, while later homes, built at the turn of the twentieth century, are primarily bungalows. Commercial buildings have cropped up amid the old residences, and today, the Pettigru Street Historic District represents 300 years of evolution in Greenville’s architecture.
The land on which the Pettigru Historic District sits once comprised two estates – the first owned by James Petigru (one t, please note that the street and historic district are spelled erroneously) Boyce and the second owned by Dr. Elbert Franklin Sevier Rowley. Both men loomed large in Greenville’s past.
Boyce, born to a Charleston cotton merchant and his wife in 1827, studied at both Brown University and Princeton Theological Seminary. He excelled in investing, and by 1851, when he returned south to pastor at the Baptist church in Columbia, was among the richest men in the state. In 1855 he relocated to Greenville to head Furman’s Theology Department. There he purchased a grand home on 155 acres, naming his property Boyce Lawn. It stretched from behind Christ Church to modern-day Cleveland Park and was noted for its rose garden.
Boyce founded the famed Southern Baptist Theology Seminary in 1858 and became its first president. Like most colleges, the seminary temporarily closed as a result of the Civil War, and during that time, Boyce served as a chaplain in the Confederacy and a representative in the statehouse. Roughly a decade after the seminary resumed, it moved to Kentucky. After Boyce passed in 1895, real estate mogul William Goldsmith bought Boyce Lawn. He then added the Rowley family estate and turned these two parcels into what is now Greenville’s oldest subdivision. When laying out his grid of streets, Goldsmith named each after a professor in the Southern Baptist Theology Seminary – James Boyce; John Broadus; Basil Manly, Jr.; Crawford Toy; William Williams; and William Whitsett.
A note about Dr. Elbert F. S. Rowley, whose name graces another downtown street but not one in this neighborhood: Rowley served twice as Greenville’s intendant, or mayor, but prior to that – at the age of just 21! – achieved a far more impressive feat. He lived to return home after the Civil War, having served in Butler’s Guards as a soldier and a sharpshooter, and having fought in 14 battles, many among them the war’s most fatal. They were, in order, First Manassas, Savage Station, Harper’s Ferry, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Chickamanga, Knoxville, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, North Anna River, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and Cedar’s Creek, where he was at last taken prisoner.
The Pettigru Historic District is listed in the National Register:
The Pettigru Street Historic District is significant for its wide range of architectural styles, which mirrors the growth of Greenville between 1890 and 1930. The district is located to the east of downtown and contains seventy-one contributing properties. The district was also the home of many prominent businessmen and mill owners. The majority of the buildings were built between 1910 and 1930 and are of frame and brick construction. They were mostly constructed in the Victorian, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Craftsman, and Bungalow styles. Although there has been some commercial encroachment, most of the area remains a residential neighborhood. Many of the streets are tree-lined, and the buildings have common setbacks.
Boyce Street
Boyce Street is named for James Petigru Boyce, as detailed above. In addition to the following two properties, the National Register also includes a wooded lot on Boyce Street.
11 Boyce Street
11 Boyce Street: ca. 1925, one-story frame building with weatherboard siding. This bungalow has a gable roof with purlins and exposed rafters. The one-story porch has brick piers supporting wooden pillars. (Add info about this home.)
15 Boyce Street
15 Boyce Street: ca. 1910, one-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding. The recessed one-story porch has Tuscan columns and is topped by a hipped dormer. The doorway features a single-light transom and double-light sidelights. (Add info about this home.)
Undeveloped Lot (Not Shown)
An undeveloped lot on Boyce Street is one of five wooded lots that contribute to the National Register’s designation of the Pettigru Historic District. (Add info about this lot.)
Broadus Avenue
Broadus Avenue is named for John Albert Broadus, a Virginia scholar and expert in the New Testament. During the Civil War, he once preached for Robert E. Lee’s Army of Virginia, earning from Lee a standing ovation. After the war, he returned to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and became its second president. In fact the gavel still used by the seminary bears Broadus’s name, though because he owned slaves, the institution has recently advocated for its replacement.
104 Broadus Avenue
104 Broadus Avenue: ca. 1895, two-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding. This late Victorian house has elements of Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles. It features a wraparound porch with Doric pillars and a two-tier portico highlighted with spindled balusters. The hipped roof with flared eaves has a port hole dormer window and a gable dormer with a Palladian window. Other elements include a denticulated cornice, diamond-paned windows and corbelled chimney caps. (Add info about this home.)
107 Broadus Avenue
107 Broadus Avenue: ca. 1920, two-story frame building with stuccoed walls. The hipped roof house has projecting gables with half-timbering. A one-story porch with Tuscan columns has been partially filled in. The front door is flanked with a multi-light transom and sidelights.
111 Broadus Avenue (Not Shown)
111 Broadus Avenue: ca. 1900, two-and-one-half-story frame building with asbestos siding. Composed with elements of Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles this house has a raking cornice with dentils and a projecting gable with a Palladian window. (Add info about this home.)
115 Broadus Avenue
115 Broadus Avenue: ca. 1900, two-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding. This eclectic dwelling with influences from Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles has a hipped roof with a bracketed cornice and projecting gables with a Palladian window. The second story recessed porch in the central bay has a leaded glass transom, corner lights, and sidelights. The first floor has a double-leaf door entrance with a stained glass transom. (Add info about this home.)
East Washington Street
This road is not named for a faculty member and simply forms the southern border of the district before extending into downtown Greenville.
638 East Washington Street
638 East Washington Street: ca. 1925, two-story brick building with hipped roof, a one-story porch with brick piers adorns the facade and the central doorway has a transom. (Add info about this home.)
644 East Washington Street
644 East Washington Street: ca. 1925, two-and-one-half-story frame building with aluminum siding and hipped roof. It features a one-story portico with Tuscan columns, a doorway with leaded glass sidelights and transom, and one-story porch with Tuscan columns. (Add info about this home.)
650 East Washington Street
650 East Washington Street: ca. 1900, two-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding and hipped roof. This Foursquare house has a one-story porch with brick piers supporting pillars and turned balusters and a second-story recessed porch with balusters. (Add info about this home.)
702 East Washington Street
702 East Washington Street: ca. 1900, one-story frame building with weatherboard siding and hipped roof. A one-story porch with attenuated Tuscan columns and turned balusters spans the facade of this Victorian cottage. The central entrance bay is flanked with wide sidelights. The central bay is flanked by two shallow polygonal bays which are topped by projecting gables with shingles. (Add info about this home.)
703 East Washington Street
703 East Washington Street: ca. 1913, one-story brick building with gable tile roof. This rectangular neo-Gothic style church has buttresses, lancet windows, and projecting lancet doorways with a circular stained glass window above it. (Add info about this home.)
704 East Washington Street
704 East Washington Street: ca. 1910, two-story frame building with weatherboard siding and hipped roof. This three-bay house has a two-story projecting pavilion in the third bay. A one-story porch with paneled pillars forms a porte-cochere. (Add info about this home.)
706 East Washington Street
706 East Washington Street: ca. 1910, two-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding and hipped roof. This house is adorned by a one-story wraparound porch, with brick piers supporting Tuscan columns, and balusters. (Add info about this home.)
712 East Washington Street
712 East Washington Street: ca. 1920, two-and-one-half-story brick building with a slate gable roof. This Tudor Revival house has an offset rounded arched entryway. Other features include half timbering and a gable end brick chimney. (Add info about this home.)
807 East Washington Street (Poinsett Club)
807 East Washington Street: 1904, two-and-one-half-story brick building with gable roof. This Neoclassic style house was the former home of Lewis W. Parker, who consolidated fifteen cotton mills in Greenville into one corporation. Later it became the home of the Poinsett Club, Greenville’s oldest men’s club. The main feature of the house is a monumental portico with a denticulated pediment supported by Ionic columns. The central doorway has a transom and sidelights flanked by pilasters and topped by a balcony with a balustrade. The house also features a modified Palladian window on the east elevation, quoins, and flat-arched lintels with keystones and terminal voussoirs. (Add info about this building.)
1001 East Washington Street
1001 East Washington Street: ca. 1900, two-and-one-half-story frame building with shingle siding. This eclectic hipped roof house has a wrap-around porch with paired Ionic columns and a one-story polygonal bay. Above the porch is a polygonal turret. (Add info about this home.)
Manly Street
Basil Manly, Jr.’s was a Baptist minister who grew up with slaves. After graduating from the University of Alabama – where his father, also a minister, was president – he spent a year at the Newton Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. He then transferred to the Princeton Theological Seminary, a conservative college noted for its sympathy towards the South. Several of his fellow faculty also attended Princeton, and a schism between traditional and progressive ideas eventually erupted at the Southern Baptist Theology Seminary. Manly specialized in the Old Testament and wrote hymns and essays. Serving as the school’s secretary, he sought to increase the school’s attendance by advertising Greenville’s “salubrious climate” and the absence of a “Yankee garrison.”
109 Manly Street (Not Shown)
This undeveloped lot is labeled in the National Register as 110 Manly instead of 109. As of 2020, it serves as a paved parking lot. (Add info about this lot.)
110 Manly Street
110 Manly Street: ca. 1915, two-and-one-half-story frame building with shingle siding. This hipped roof house has a one-story porch with Tuscan columns. The front doors have been altered. Please note that the National Register mislabels 100 Manly as an undeveloped lot. That lot is actually located at 109 Manly. (Add info about this lot.)
111 Manly Street
Please note that the National Register Listing for this property is mislabeled. What it calls 111 Manly is actually 110 Manly. The home shown below is 111 Manly. Further, the National Register describes the home that is located at 111 Manly as being located at 109 Manly, which is presently (2020) a parking lot. The National Register’s description for what is truly 111 Manly Street reads, “Circa, 1920, two-and-one-half-story brick building. This house has a one-story porch supported by tapered pillars and brick piers. A sidelight is flanked by two multi-light doors. The hipped roof features wide eaves and a hipped dormer. (Add info about this home.)
117 Manly Street
117 Manly Street: ca. 1925, two-and-one-half-story brick building. The front and side porches are supported by brick pillars. Other features include a shed dormer, eyebrow dormers and purlin brackets. (Add info about this home.)
Pettigru Street
James Petigru Boyce was named in honor of James Louis Pettigru and shared his anti-secession sentiments (note that the spellings of Petigru and Pettigru do not match). Boyce accurately predicted that the South would lose in war because the North was wealthier. (See top of page to learn more about on Boyce.)
111 Pettigru Street
111 Pettigru Street: ca. 1925, this two-story Colonial Revival brick building has a one-story portico with Tuscan columns surmounted by a balustrade. It has flanking sun porches, transom, sidelights and a wooden string course. (Add info about this home.)
211 Pettigru Street
211 Pettigru Street: ca. 1900, two-story frame building with weatherboard siding and hipped roof. This house has a one-story wrap-around porch with turned posts and balusters. (Add info about this home.)
304 Pettigru Street
304 Pettigru Street: ca. 1920, two-story brick building with hipped tile roof. The first floor central bay features a pedimented doorway with a raking denticulated cornice supported by fluted pilasters. The door is surrounded with multi-light transom and sidelights. Between the two floors are two stone inserts of urns and festoons. (Add info about this home.)
400 Pettigru Street
400 Pettigru Street: ca. 1920, two-story frame building with shingled siding. This hipped roof house has a gable roof porch with purlin brackets above the round-arched doorway. (Add info about this home.)
401 Pettigru Street
401 Pettigru Street: ca. 1910, two-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding on the first floor and asbestos siding on the second and half story and a high-pitched gable roof. This house features a porch with brick pillars and wrought-iron balustrades, and pendants. (Add info about this home.)
415 Pettigru Street
415 Pettigru Street: ca. 1920, one-and-one-half-story frame building with asbestos siding and gambrel roof. A one-story wrap-around porch with attenuated Tuscan columns and plain balustrades spans the first floor. The Colonial Revival house also features a vertical light transom and a polygonal bay window. (Add info about this home.)
501 Pettigru Street
501 Pettigru Street: ca. 1920, two-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding and hipped roof. It features an oriel window on the west elevation, one exterior end brick chimney, one interior brick chimney and a hipped dormer. (Add info about this home.)
505 Pettigru Street
505 Pettigru Street: ca. 1920, one-and-one-half-story frame building with shingle siding and hipped roof. This bungalow has a one-story wraparound porch with pillars, exposed rafters, purlins, two hipped dormers, one gable dormer and three interior brick chimneys. (Add info about this home.)
507 Pettigru Street
507 Pettigru Street: ca. 1915, one-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding and gable roof. The house features single-light transoms above its windows, exposed rafters, front porch and two interior brick chimneys. (Add info about this home.)
Toy Street
Like William Whitsett (see below), Crawford Howell Toy studied in Germany and his lectures included modern ideas, such as those of Charles Darwin. He was forced to resign, landing on his feet at Harvard.
Wooded Lot (Not Shown)
There is one undeveloped lot on Toy street which is considered a contributing property according to the National Register. (Add info about this lot.)
10 Toy Street (Hayne School)
10 Toy Street: ca. 1920, two-story brick building. Former school now serves as office space. The building has a central pavilion with a stepped parapet above a corbelled cornice. The protruding entranceway has a stone surround with a segmental arch. Decorative brick panels divide the first floor from the second.
Whitsett Street
William H. Whitsett also studied in Germany and brought home relatively new perspectives. Considered a brilliant scholar, he helped replaced earlier members of the faculty including Boyce, Manly, and Williams. In the end, his ideas proved too revolutionary, and he too was forced to resign.
2 Whitsett Street
2 Whitsett Street: ca. 1920, one-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding on the first floor, and shingle siding on the half story. A modified Palladian window is in the gable end. Other features include a wraparound porch with brick pillars and large hipped dormers. (Add info about this home.)
3 Whitsett Street
3 Whitsett Street: ca. 1925, one-story frame bungalow with shingle siding and a gable roof. This bungalow has a porch with brick supporting piers. (Add info about this home.)
4 Whitsett Street
4 Whitsett Street: ca. 1910, one-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding and hipped roof. A one-story porch with Tuscan columns and plain balusters spans the facade. Above the porch is a small hipped dormer. (Add info about this home.)
8 Whitsett Street
8 Whitsett Street: ca. 1910, one-and-one-half-story building with weatherboard siding and gable roof. The house features a porch with brick pillars, sidelights, transom, two polygonal bay windows and a hipped dormer. (Add info about this home.)
11 Whitsett Street (Not Shown)
11 Whitsett Street: ca. 1905, two-story frame building with weatherboard siding and a hipped roof. The one-story porch has Tuscan columns and a one-story bay is located on the west elevation. (Add info about this home.)
12 Whitsett Street
12 Whitsett Street: ca. 1920, one-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding and gable roof. A one-story porch with brick piers supporting tapered wooden pillars and balusters spans the facade. Three leaded glass transoms top the windows and doors of the facade. Above the porch is a large shed roof dormer. (Add info about this home.)
16 Whitsett Street
16 Whitsett Street: ca. 1925, two-story brick building with hipped roof. This house features two porches with brick piers, multi-light sidelights, a string course, wide eaves and exposed rafters. (Add info about this home.)
100 Whitsett Street
100 Whitsett Street: ca. 1920, one-and-one-half-story frame building with shingle siding and gable roof. This bungalow has two one-story porches, exposed rafters, purlins, two interior stuccoed chimneys and two shed roof dormers. (Add info about this home.)
101 Whitsett Street
101 Whitsett Street: ca. 1900, two-story frame building with asbestos tile siding and hipped roof. The house has a one-story wrap-around porch with plain balusters and tapered pillars. (Add info about this home.)
107 Whitsett Street
107 Whitsett Street ca. 1920, two-story frame building with weatherboard siding on the first floor, shingle siding on the second floor and a hipped roof. The windows have multi-lights and the one-story porch has been altered. Although the porch has been altered, it does not detract from the character of the house. (Add info about this home.)
109 Whitsett Street
109 Whitsett Street: ca. 1920, one-and-one-half-story brick building with a hipped tile roof. The one-story porch with projecting gable roof has brick piers supporting Tuscan columns. (Add info about this home.)
110 Whitsett Street (Not Shown)
110 Whitsett Street: ca. 1925, one-and-one-half-story frame building with shingle siding and gable roof. This bungalow with boxed cornice and large returns has a central gable dormer and a one-story porch with brick piers. (Add info about this home.)
113 Whitsett Street
113 Whitsett Street: ca. 1915, one-and-one-half-story frame building with weatherboard siding and gambrel roof. This Colonial Revival house has bay windows on altered one-story porch, and two projecting gable dormers. (Add info about this home.)
115 Whitsett Street (Not Shown)
115 Whitsett Street: ca. 1900, two-story frame building with weatherboard siding and gable roof with projecting gables. The one-story porch has been altered and the door is flanked by sidelights and transom. (Add info about this home.)
Williams Street
William Williams earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia, then studied law at Harvard before becoming a Baptist minister. He taught ecclesiastical history at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Williams suffered from tuberculosis and is buried at Springwood Cemetery in Greenville.
18 Williams Street
18 Williams Street: ca. 1900, two-and-one-half-story frame building with shingle siding and a high-pitched gable roof. Built by Thomas Parker, this Dutch Colonial Revival house has an irregular plan and small casement windows. (Add info about this home.)
100 Williams Street
100 Williams Street: ca. 1910, one-and-one-half-story frame building with shingle siding and hipped roof. This five-bay house has a central bay with double leaf doors and a transom. Other features are a denticulated cornice, central hipped dormer with denticulated cornice, and corbelled chimney caps. (Add info about this home.)
101 Williams Street (Not Shown)
101 Williams Street: ca. 1900, two-story frame building with weatherboard siding and hipped roof. A one-story porch with Doric columns and turned balusters spans the first floor facade. The two front doors each have a transom. (Add info about this home.)
Pettigru Historic District: Help Build This Page
The South Carolina Picture Project is a grassroots labor of love, built over many years by citizens across the state. This landmark entry is especially in need of attention. Are you familiar with the Pettigru Historic District or a particular home within it? If so, please take a moment to fill in one or more of the following fields based on your knowledge. We really appreciate your help, and we will credit you for your contribution. Thank you!
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