The Old College

Contrasted with The Shack, you might surprised with how well this little shack was kept up. It's nearly seventy five years older.

The little cabin was built in 1851, while the main academic building was under construction. Thus, this was the first building on the downtown campus. It's hard to imagine the two classrooms inside, with James C. Furman teaching on one side, while Charles Judson taught on the other.

The building was moved to the new campus and was placed by the lake in 1958. The plaque in front tells the role of a student organization in making that move possible and keeping the building from being demolished.

Although the temporary structure is almost of no architectural significance because of its cheap, temporary construction, take a look at the Slave Dwellings at Magnolia Plantation (see photograph). We have no clue how this little structure was used after the main building was constructed, but it's not impossible that this would have been used as a place to house groundskeepers, cooks, or other laborers, or their implements.

While Furman has a great archive on other materials, the nineteenth century operations of the university are almost all gone. Did somebody in Furman's past find the records of the work being done uninteresting, insignificant, or embarrassing to Furman's image?

Without their individual names or stories, how does an institution lift up the lives of those who made Furman possible?