The New Frontier

The old campus of the GWC didn't end here. In the photograph, you can see the historic aerial photo from the 1950s, with yellow overlay of modern Academy Street cutting through campus.

Before the the college was built in the mid-1850s, Academy Street ended here at an academy--Greenville Women’s Academy. This school is not to be confused with the college. The school would have sat right where Academy Street's cars are whizzing by now!

In 1819, 47 Greenville leaders raised $4,738 from about 350 residents in order to build schools ("Heritage Green," Bainbridge). They asked Vardry McBee, the visionary land holder and planner of Greenville, to donate 30 acres of land along its northern woods as a site for the Greenville Male and Female Academies. Academy Street thus ran from McBee's home and downtown Greenville's old grist mills up to the academies--the schools for Greenville's early residents.

One of the other significant figures in this history to mention is William Bullein Johnson, the academy's first teacher and leader. A Brown-educated Baptist leader, Johnson was a phenomenal scholar who devoted his career to young women's education. In Baptist belief, women were able to interpret scripture personally even if they were not to have political power. So there was an early and unusual excitement for women's education in the denomination, especially in the "backwoods" places like Greenville (away from the stifling social pressures of the Lowcountry and Charleston). In this early period under Johnson, women were even studying natural philosophy, chemistry, logic, moral philosophy, Latin, and Greek. This was nearly unheard of in its time.

When Johnson had moved on to chair the SC Baptist Convention and the school began to decline, Johnson led the efforts in the Baptist Conventions to buy the property and begin the Greenville Women's College in the 1850s.

But now, we're at the edge of Heritage Green, as Academy Street has sliced through the historic property and become a major highway. Here at the edge now sits the Children’s Museum of the Upstate, the seventh largest children’s museum in the nation and the first with Smithsonian affiliation. Opening in July of 2009, as a renovation to the existing structure, the Children’s Museum has been a major center for learning and fun. The building is nearly 80,000 square feet and three stories high. There are 19 different interactive exhibits, including some that change seasonally as well as a two story climbing wall, a flight simulator, a water education park, and music rooms. These exhibits are all extremely colorful, educational, and full of life. This site is a must-see in Greenville for children of all ages and accompanying adults. And if you're an adult and want to see it without accompanying children, don't worry--several times a year, the museum hosts "adult only" events to let the grown kids have a little fun too!

So now that you know about this current function of the space, let's take a long walk before we get into why it was built and who it served. For now, we'll just note it was the result of some very brave students and their mentors--a continual theme of Heritage Green!

Sources Used:

Judith Bainbridge, "Heritage Green evolved since 1819 Donation." Greenville Online. March 26, 2014

“Children's Museum of the Upstate.” Harper, 27 July 2018,

About. The Children's Museum of the Upstate. Accessed 11 Oct. 2018.