Abstract:

This paper examines the social and architectural evolution of carceral environments in South Carolina in the years before, during, and after Reconstruction. This paper maps the cyclical decentralization process of pre-Civil War slave quarters to the state’s erection of the first penitentiary, to convict leasing quarters in the years following Reconstruction.

From the decentralization of vernacular slave quarters over seen through the surveillance of the enslavers “big house,” South Carolina’s landscape was marked with a visual segregation of racial and social hierarchy. The quarters were the physical embodiment of racial subjugation, and their spatial arrangement and materiality was reflected as such. The penal system of the time was also decentralized, leaving local municipalities responsible for housing offenders in local jails. Following the Civil War, South Carolina opened the state’s first penitentiary in 1867, the first centralized penal institution of the state. A multi-tier cell block, a hospital, and workshops built from brick and granite arose along the banks of the Congaree River in Columbia. This shift in penology marked a moment of spatial consolidation of control. The “big house” now became the space of confinement itself, realized through the industrialization of carcerality and backed by the racial logics of confinement. However, this era was brief. Post-Reconstruction marked a reversion back to the decentralized systems through remote convict leasing, repurposing the previous spatial and material logics of slave quarters and local jails. The landscape of these leasing quarters mimicked their earlier precedents through the return to minimally clustered dwellings over seen by a separate “big house.”

This paper helps illustrate the architectural language used in South Carolina’s early carceral environments, highlighting the intertwined social forces of race, labor and power in mid to late 19th century design. This paper illustrates a framework to reinterpret how we understand and view the complicated history in the standardization of carcerality, especially in the South.