Bell Tower Circle

This spot of iconic beauty is surrounded by antebellum legacies.

The bricks below your feet in the Bell Tower circle and potentially also the Rose Garden come from the Old Campus, specifically the Bricks in the Bell Tower circle are likely from the Richard Furman Hall and original Bell Tower. The notes on the construction of those buildings clearly identify enslaved labor as "boys," such as "Vardy McBee's Boy" who were leased to build that structure. With old bricks, you can often see the finger indentations where the unbaked bricks were loaded into the kiln or sun-dried, so take a look.

The Bell Tower on this lake is an identical replica of the Bell Tower that was downtown and burnt down in the 1960s, after campus had moved in the late 1950s to this land. The original bells are in the tower, including the 1850 bell rung by Abraham Sims at the behest of his white overseers to mark Confederate and Furman sports victories.

And another original is the Old College building, built in 1850 as a temporary structure for the school. For a couple of years, while the Greenville downtown campus was built, all classes of the university met in this structure. It is interesting architecturally that it is an exact replica of slave dwellings from the period; and this makes sense, that this would have been an easy structure to build because they were so common across the South. We have no record that enslaved or freed people ever lived in this building; it is only known to have been used as the one-room schoolbuilding for Furman in 1850. Still, it stands in contrast to the big Cherrydale house as one of only two antebellum structures on campus.

Final Reflections:

What aspects of Furman’s past/present most speak to your prior experiences and interests?

What aspects of Furman’s past/present might affect your academic and class experience?

What aspects of Furman’s past/present might affect your future?

Take the opportunity to dialogue with others about this. One of the most important parts of this tour is considering how different people can see a space. Furman is doing good work to give us a factual, educational setting to have these conversations, unlike much of the world beyond our gates. Take advantage of that and engage in dialogues that you might never get the opportunity to have elsewhere.