Join us for a book talk and signing with Elizabeth Cassidy West and Katharine Thompson, On the Horseshoe: A Guide to the Historic Campus of the University of South Carolina | USC Press.

The comprehensive history of the original campus structures and the people who lived and worked there

Founded in 1801 as South Carolina College, the University of South Carolina is one of the nation’s oldest public colleges. Located in the heart of downtown Columbia and bound by Sumter, Pendleton, Bull, and Greene Streets, this historic landscape, known today as the Horseshoe, has both endured and prospered through more than two centuries of South Carolina’s often-turbulent history. 

In On the Horseshoe: A Guide to the Historic Campus of the University of South Carolina, Elizabeth Cassidy West and Katharine Thompson Allen offer a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the historic Horseshoe. So much more than just a walking tour of Carolina’s original campus, On the Horseshoe features a wealth of archival photographs and drawings dating back to the nineteenth century and also provides a close look at the Horseshoe’s structures as well as the men and women who lived, worked, and studied in them. 

Walter Edgar, Neuffer Professor of Southern Studies Emeritus and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at USC, provides a foreword.

Elizabeth Cassidy West is the university archivist for the University of South Carolina. She is the author of University of South Carolina Football Vault: The History of the Gamecocks and The University of South Carolina and is curator of more than twenty-five exhibits about USC’s campus history.

Katharine Thompson Allen is a project archivist for the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina. She served as lead researcher and author for the booklet “The University of South Carolina Horseshoe: Heart of the Campus,” edited by West.

Books will be available for purchase and signing. All programs will take place from noon to 1:00 p.m. at the South Carolina State Library located at 1500 Senate St., Columbia. Speaker @ the Center is FREE and open to the public. Feel free to bring your lunch. No registration required.

The South Carolina Center for the Book is the South Carolina Affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book and is a cooperative project of the South Carolina State Library, the University of South Carolina School of Library and Information Science, and The Humanities CouncilSC.