The South Carolina State House Grounds: A Guidebook by Lydia Mattice Brandt

Published May 2021

Available in the Richland Library collection in print format and from the University of South Carolina Press.

Lydia Brandt, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of South Carolina, provides readers with a guide to the South Carolina State House Grounds that contextualizes the twenty-two acre memorial landscape and its historical development as a site of public memory and mythmaking. Formatted as a guidebook with thirty-three individual entries for each monument on the site, grouped into three chronological chapters, each with an introductory framing essay. The volume also includes an introductory essay that contextualizes the evolution of the site and its significance over a span of more than 230 years. The entries combine meticulous primary source research with Brandt’s sensibility as an architectural historian, attuned to the significance of visual components to convey meaning, in order to develop a first-of-its-kind detailed examination of the significant role that the South Carolina State House Grounds has played as a venue for the contestation of historical memory. She shows how politics was never relegated just to the legislative floor inside the State House, but rather continually spilled out into the commemorative landscape that developed outside. More than just a simple guide to the monuments, detailing the date of their erection, sculptors, and placement, Brandt also delves into their meaning, past and present, and allows readers a new appreciation of the site. ~From the Publisher 

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