Here’s a picture that might have a few years on it. What is it and where is it? Send us your guess – as well as your name and hometown – to feedback@statehousereport.com.
Last week’s mystery, “Magnificent building,” came from veteran sleuth and photographer Barry Wingard of Florence. It shows the Lawton-Chase House, which formerly housed the Florence Museum in Timrod Park on Spruce Street. The building, now owned by the City of Florence, is used as an event center.
David Taylor of Darlington sent us the text on a historical sign in front of the building:
“This Art Moderne house, completed in 1939 for Joseph Maner Lawton, has housed the Florence Museum since 1953. It was designed by Sanborn Chase, then an engineering student influenced by Moderne architecture in France and later a prominent local businessman. The house features curved streamlined forms, a semicircular glass block entrance bay, and black glass bands just below the roofline. When completed it was described as ‘the talk of Florence.’
“The Florence Museum, chartered in 1936, was founded by the Florence Museum Committee, a group of civic-minded women who had organized as the Blue Bird Tea Room Committee during World War I. It was housed in the basement of the Florence Public Library from 1939 to 1952, when the museum board acquired this house. Its collection of fine art, archaeological and historical artifacts, and natural science exhibits was opened to the public here in 1953.
This week’s correct spotters included: Will Bradley of Las Vegas, Nevada; Elizabeth Jones and Jay Altman, both of Columbia; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; Scott Brown of San Jose, Calif.; Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas; Jacie Godfrey and Pam McDaniel, both of Florence; and Pat Keadle of Wagener.
>> Send us a mystery picture. If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com and mark it as a photo submission. Thanks.
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