Aiken’s 1953 Gas Explosion
By the beginning of the 1950s, Aiken, South Carolina, was well on its way to becoming a progressive and modern small town. For more than a century, it had been a destination for northern sports enthusiasts who enjoyed the mild winters for golf and equestrian sports. Then, almost overnight, it became the nearest town to the largest construction project ever undertaken in the United States, The Savannah River Plant. The influx of tens of thousands of people in 1952 caused the downtown to expand to keep pace with the sudden increase in population.
The early hours of January 27, 1953, started out like every other weekday morning in Aiken. People were going about their morning business as usual around eight o’clock. Cars were heading down the roads toward their typical morning destinations. Parents were dropping their children off at schools and heading to their work places. Then, the unthinkable happened.
At approximately 8:30 AM, an explosion caused by a natural gas leak ripped through the basement of Jones Electric Company. Located between Hayne and Richland Avenues on Laurens Street, the building burst into flames almost immediately. Soon thereafter, the intense fire overtook four more buildings: McCreary Dry Goods, Liles Drugs, the Diana Shop and Platt Drugstore. All of them were burning out of control within moments of the explosion. People who lived in Aiken at that time have likened the blast to “a bomb” hitting the town. The shaking of the ground was reportedly felt miles away from downtown.
Aiken firefighters and medical crews rushed to the horrific scene in downtown Aiken, but more assistance was needed. So, the fire trucks and personnel from the Savannah River Plant drove the 20 miles to help their newly adopted hometown cope with the disaster. As the fire was being fought, several local men began to hear the cries of victims who were caught in the rubble. Earl Young and Ray Hydrick pulled four people who were trapped in the debris to safety. Sadly, ten other people were not as fortunate.
It took hours for the fire to finally be extinguished and when it was, almost one entire block of Laurens Street was destroyed. It took several years for new construction to be finished to replace the buildings that were lost that day.
Recently, an historical marker was erected on Laurens Street in Aiken. It was placed very close to the site where the gas leak that started the fire occurred. The marker gives general details of the explosion, but more importantly, it lists the names of those who lost their lives that day.
It reads: On this spot on Jan. 27, 1953, an explosion caused by a natural gas leak destroyed the Jones Electric Co. building and damaged Holley Hardware, Platt's Drug Store, R.W. McCreary's, The Diana Shop and Liles Drug Company. The explosion and ensuing fire left a gaping hole in the face of downtown Aiken. Ten citizens of Aiken were killed in the accident and are here remembered. They are Leila May Weeks, David O. Rutland, Emilie C. McCarter, John C. Watson, Charles Nelson Long, Mrs. R.B. Dunkin, John Henry (Jack) Neibling, James Bubba Moseley, Jack Holley and Ruth Madrey.
Aiken historical society meeting pt 1
Woman speaker welcomes audience to the Aiken Historical Society on August 28, 1983. She introduces three guests who will speak later (Mandel Surasky; Odell Weeks and Hastings Wyman.) She then tells the history of the Highland Park Hotel
Mike Stewart's beginning
Musician Mike Stewart talks about his start in the music business and Aiken, South Carolina.
Clarion Inn & Suites Aiken Video : Aiken, South Carolina, United States
Clarion Inn & Suites Aiken Video : Aiken, South Carolina, United States
Property Location With a stay at Clarion Inn & Suites in Aiken, you'll be convenient to Aiken Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame and Museum and Hopeland Gardens. This hotel is within close proximity of Aiken County Historical Museum and Hitchcock Woods.Rooms Make yourself at home in one of the 99 air-conditioned rooms featuring refrigerators and microwaves. Complimentary wireless Internet access keeps you connected, and cable programming is available for your entertainment. Conveniences include coffee/tea makers and irons/ironing boards, and housekeeping is provided daily.Rec, Spa, Premium Amenities Be sure to enjoy recreational amenities, including a spa tub, a fitness center, and a seasonal outdoor pool.Dining A complimentary breakfast is included.Business, Other Amenities Featured amenities include a business center, complimentary newspapers in the lobby, and dry cleaning/laundry services. Free self parking is available onsite.
Check-in from 16:00 , check-out prior to 12:00
Parking, 24 hours Front Desk Service, Restaurant/cafe, Swimming Pool, Business centre, Gym, Spa, Pets allowed, Laundry service.
TV, Coffee/Tea, Hairdryer, Smoking room.
Hotel adress: 155 Colony Parkway, Aiken, United States
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Aiken and Bobby Jones
Golf has been a favorite sport in Aiken, South Carolina for more than a century. Palmetto Golf Club is one of the oldest golf courses in the United States, founded in 1892 by the winter colonist Thomas Hitchcock. Aiken is situated just a little more than 15 miles from one of the most famous golf tournaments that’s played: the Augusta National Golf Club which hosts The Master’s Tournament. The Masters is the first of the four major championships in professional golf and, unlike the other three events, is always played at the same golf club every year. One of the people who started the tournament was the celebrated golfer Bobby Jones, who also often played at The Palmetto Golf Club. Each April, golf enthusiasts from all over the world vie for tickets and travel to Augusta, Georgia and areas surrounding the tournament, like Aiken, to watch five days of competition between the best golfers on the professional circuit.
Robert Knowles was a winter colonist from Boston who came to Aiken in the 1930s when he was stationed in Augusta at Camp Gordon. His great-grandfather was the illustrious American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “Bobby”, as he was called, was enchanted with the Aiken of that time because there were no paved roads and people still drove buggies. At a social event, he met his future wife: the only child of Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, who was famous for having had a long-standing and well-documented relationship with President Franklin Roosevelt.
Bobby played golf every chance he got. He had been an avid golfer since he was just a small boy in Boston. Soon he was a member of the Palmetto Golf Club. From 1945 to 1953 Palmetto held a professional golf event called th Devereux Milburn tournament the weekend before the Masters. This tournament was won by such notables as Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson. Bobby, as a member and a gifted player, helped organize the tournament in Aiken. Then in the 1950s, he became one of the scorekeepers at The Master’s Tournament.
The scoring of golf is based on standardized rules. In a tournament, the number of strokes is counted and the winner of the event is the player who sinks the ball into the hole with the least number of strokes. The number of strokes assigned to each hole is classified by its par. “Par”, in golf, indicates the number of strokes it takes a practiced golfer to complete a single play of the hole. One of the main factors in determining the par of a hole is the distance that lies between the tee and the green.
In order to show how the participants were progressing during the tournament for the first six holes, Bobby devised a system in which the red numbers on the main board indicated how many strokes were “below” par and the green numbers indicated how many strokes the golfer had made that were “above” par. Before that time, the score was kept individually by the golfers and their caddies and was not displayed. As a result, the terms “above par” and “below par” became part of the scoring vocabulary in the game of golf.
Bobby Knowles became a gifted golfer and was considered one of the best amateur in America. A golfer is termed an “amateur” when he or she plays in tournaments, but does not receive money for wins. In 1983, he was inducted into the South Carolina Golf Hall of Fame as having an “extensive international amateur playing career”. He won many South Carolina championships, including the, Walker Cup team. He served as a Masters Committeeman for 29 years.
Aiken's Wooden Hotels and their Fires
“The Highland Park Hotel may be said to be the cornerstone of Aiken, for it is the original, the mouthpiece that has made Aiken known to the world. It has been in existence for twenty years or more, growing every year and keeping pace with the times and the demands upon it – until now it is one of largest and best hotels in the State. It is a handsome building, spreading out over a great extent of surface, and extraordinary care has been taken in the matter of drainage and water supply to keep it perfectly pure and healthy.”
The writer, who is only mysteriously identified in the New York Times article of February 28, 1892 as “W. L.”, goes on to say that Mr. B. P. Chatfield, the owner of the Hotel, gave him an “interesting account of his going to Aiken and establishing a hotel there when the place was little known and its future extremely uncertain”.
The Highland Park Hotel was built in Aiken between 1866 and 1870, just a few years after the end of the Civil War, by the Connecticut native. The Reconstruction Period was not a time when Northerners were especially welcome in the South. Despite this fact, the hotel prospered in its location at the west end of Park Avenue. The Hotel sat on what today is an area between Highland Park Drive and Hayne Avenue and its verandas faced toward what would become Hitchcock Woods. It could accommodate from 250 to 300 guests at a time. People flocked to Aiken because it was regarded as a health resort.
Just six years later, another New York Times article on February 6th, 1898 reported that: “The Highland Park Hotel was destroyed this morning by fire that started in the laundry room.” The 168 guests, who were awakened by the blaze, were able to get out safely with their bags (with the exception of one Bostonian who was shot and wounded by a hotel engineer). The impressive Highland Park Hotel burned to the ground. A second hotel was built on the site in 1914 but also fell victim to fire in 1945.
Within a two short years, another grand, wooden hotel was being constructed: and not far from where the Highland Park had lay in ashes. The Park in the Pines Hotel was built on forty acres of land that had been purchased from a section of city property called Eustis Park. Presently, the Aiken County Administration building (originally the Aiken County Hospital building) stands on the site of what was later known as Toole Town in the 1930s and 40s.
By 1906, the accolades began pouring in about The Park in the Pines Hotel from Northern writers. It was reported to be “among the most elegantly equipped and liberally conducted hotels of the South.” In fact, it had 300 guest rooms and was nestled amidst the pine trees that were thought to deliver a “soothing and purifying effect exerted upon the mucous membrane of the respiratory passages by the exhalations from this tree,” and “that the climate of Aiken owes much of its well-deserved reputation as a health resort for persons suffering from all forms of disease affecting the respiratory tract.”
But the fire that struck early on a Sunday morning in February of 1913, burned even more swiftly that it had fifteen years earlier.
After fleeing for their lives amidst a savage blaze, the Pine’s winter residents lost all that they had brought with them for the season. The speed with which the hotel burned was blamed on low water pressure so that the firemen who were fighting the flames not extinguish the flames. The wealthy and well-known hotel guests were quickly given shelter by locals and the smaller, but elegant, Willcox Inn.
And so it was the twin February fires that ultimately brought an end to the era of the massive wooden hotels that made Aiken a destination as a winter health resort.
The Iselins: Winter Colonists and Philanthropists
The headline of the announcement in the New York Times dated May 5th, 1894 read, “Hope Goddard Engaged to C.O. Iselin, Well-Known Yachtsman to Marry Heiress of Millions”.
Hope Goddard, a young woman of twenty-six was in line to inherit a huge fortune. She was beautiful, brave and brilliant. What more could a man such as Charles Oliver Iselin want? He was forty years old and a millionaire in his own right. His wealth had come to him from his grandfather’s investments in coalmining and railroads. But C.O. Iselin was much more famous, in his own right. He lived the life of a dashing sportsman, who Time magazine said was, probably the most famed yachtsman in the U.S. during the latter part of the 19th Century.
Charles was a member of the elite New York Yacht Club. This very special priviledge allowed him to be eligible to participate in the America’s Cup: the most celebrated regatta in the in the history of sailing with the oldest active trophy in international sports. The race is named the America's Cup in honor of the first yacht that won the trophy in a match against Britain in 1857; the schooner America. That same trophy remained in the hands of the New York Yacht Club from 1857 until 1983. Charles Iselin will always be remembered for his skill for helping to keep the trophy during that time.
After he and Hope married, she became the first woman from the United States, to crew for an America’s Cup Race and her involvement in it created quite a controversy in the 1890s. Hope played in a 1900 golf tournament that was hosted by the Prince of Wales. She went on to soundly beat the Russian Grand Duke Michael. Hope and Charles were often seen sharing the British Royal Family’s private box at the famed Ascot horse race course in England.
Together, they sound like the hero and heroine of a romance novel. However, they were members of a select group of American Industrial Revolution aristocracy who built mansions in Aiken, South Carolina for their winter residences.
One of their homes, named All View”, was constructed in 1890 in New York. The castle-like design was created by the renowned architect Stanford White and the estate still sits atop nearly three acres on a private peninsula in the sound. The house is situated to take advantage of the sweeping panoramic water views of the City. Fredrick Olmstead, who designed Central Park, was their landscape architect. Another of their homes called “Wolver Hollow” was built in 1914 on 160 acres in Upper Brookville, New York.
The Iselins had their winter residence constructed in Aiken around the turn-of-the-century and named it “Hopelands”. Their seasons in town were filled with thoroughbred racing and the gardens around the house were constantly improved. Hundreds of camellia bushes were planted in Hopelands’ gardens around the massive, old oak trees. But their enchantment with the small southern town spurred them to do more than just visit. Hope and Charles organized the Aiken Hospital and Relief Society in 1917 to build and buy equipment for the first hospital in town. One story that is told about the funding of the first hospital building was that Hope won a great deal of money playing poker with her friends. She wanted to donate her winnings to a local church, but her “ill-gotten gains” were turned down. So she and Charles decided that it would be put to good use by starting the Aiken Hospital and Relief Society.
Hope was on the board of the Schofield School in Aiken. She supported the charter of that institution and was dedicated to the education of African-American students, who were still segregated from public schools at that time.
Charles died in 1932, but Hope continued to be involved with her horses and invest in philanthropic causes in Aiken. When she died, at age 102 in 1970, she left the fourteen acres of Hopelands Gardens to the City so that everyone would always be able to enjoy the beauty of the landscape she cultivated for almost seventy years. Today, her former stables are the home of the Aiken Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame and Museum and a permanent stage has been constructed by one of the ponds for concert performances.
Irene Trowell Harris: From Eleven Children to a General
In 1954, when Irene Trowell was a teenager, the South was a difficult place to live if you were a person of color. Segregation was in effect and very few opportunities existed for young black women. Irene’s parents worked very hard, yet they were still very poor. Although both only had a third grade education they had a happy, positive outlook on life that they passed along to their eleven children. The importance of a good education and an active church life were qualities that were constantly extolled by her parents. The sole income for the family came from the crops they could grow on their farm in Montmorenci, six miles outside the town of Aiken, South Carolina. The children, who were old enough to help, had daily chores that also impacted their ability to attend school fulltime. “When harvest time came for the cotton crop,” Irene remembers, “we’d have to be out of school for more than a month to help bring it in for market.”
It was on one such day that Irene looked up from the row of cotton she was gathering and marveled at the plane that roared overhead. The contrails it left behind it enthralled the teenager. She stared at the sight and made a solemn promise to herself at that moment that someday she would be on board an aircraft just like the one she was watching from her place in the cotton field. “My brothers and sisters just laughed at me when I told them what I intended to do,” chuckled Irene. “It seemed completely crazy that I could ever achieve a dream such as that at that particular time. But I was determined that I would fly. Soon Irene, who always excelled in her studies, got a job at a local diner. She worked her way through high school and brought the money she earned home to her family to supplement their income.
All the while, her dream of flying never faded in her mind, Nursing seemed a more reasonable occupation and one that her mother had, herself, wished to pursue. Then in 1955, something miraculous happened. Her local church raised $60 dollars to add to the money Irene’s family had been saving. Together the Trowell family decided that Irene should be the first one to go forward into an advanced education. She enrolled in Columbia Hospital School of Nursing at Jersey State College and graduated, with honors, in 1959. As each brother and sister became old enough to consider going to college, Irene was the person each looked to for guidance. She shared her finances so each could continue their education just as her family and church had done for her.
While working as a head nurse in New York City, a colleague told her about the Air National Guard. All at once, her aspirations of being a nurse and also being able to fly seemed to merge. Soon, Irene was a flight nurse who traveled all over the world. As she steadily moved up the ranks in the Air National Guard, she also earned a master’s degree in public health from Yale University and a doctorate in education from Columbia University. Major-General Trowell-Harris is the first African-American female in the history of the National Guard to be promoted to a general officer and the first female to have a Tuskegee Airmen Chapter named in her honor.
Today, she heads the Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Women Veterans in Washington, DC and frequently meets with the President and Mrs. Obama on various issues that relate to women in the armed forces.
Major-General Irene Trowell-Harris has lead a life filled with achievements and awards that amaze everyone who meets her. But what is her most cherished accomplishment? “Even with all the places I’ve been and all the wonderful opportunities I’ve had, the most exciting moment of my life was when I received my wings. That crazy idea I told my brothers and sisters in the cotton field in 1954 came true!”
Aiken Musicians
Aiken Musicians: The Rhythm of the Town
The town of Aiken, South Carolina, has been (and is) a home to an eclectic group of musicians.
James Wesley Miley was born in Aiken in 1903 to a talented musical family. Always known as Bubber, he moved with his family to New York City in 1909. In Harlem, he would perform on the streets and by the age of 14, he was displaying quite a talent for playing both the cornet and trombone. In 1920, he joined a jazz group known as the Carolina Five and was heard in small clubs around New York City.
Bubber was one of the first horn players to use muting items such as a plumber’s plunger and a derby hat over the bell of his horn. The result was the “wah-wah” sound was so popular in the early jazz movement. Soon Bubber’s style incorporated all kinds of mutes and by 1923, Duke Ellington had replaced his regular trumpeter with Bubber Miley.
Hits made popular by Ellington, including Creole Love Call and Black and Tan Fantasy, feature his incredible trumpet solos. Prior to his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 29 in 1932, Bubber played with almost all of the great jazz artists of the time.
Josef Casimir Hofmann was a pianist who has been heralded by music preservationist Ward Marston as, “arguably this [the twentieth] century's greatest pianist. Hofmann is a legend and his final Casimir Hall Recital on April 7, 1938 is the pinnacle of a remarkable career.” Hofman was born in Poland in 1876 and came to Aiken with his wife, Marie Eustis Hofmann, to live while their daughter attended the school they help found. The well-respected Fermata School for Girls first opened in 1919 on the upper floor of their home.
Etta Jones was a talented jazz singer was born 1928. Always confused with a more commercially popular singer of the same era, Etta James, the Aiken-born Etta has often been called jazz musician's jazz singer by industry experts. Their respect for her personal style came from her masterful interpretations of timeless favorites from a variety of famous blues singers. Etta’s unique voice inflections brought to mind the talents of blues greats like Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington. Her debut album, Don't Go to Strangers, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Etta enjoyed her only really big commercial success in the record business with Don’t Go to Strangers and the album eventually sold more than one million copies.
One of the biggest musical stories told over and over again about Aiken is its part in supplying the flowered hat with the price tag on it made famous by Minne Pearl. Sarah Ophelia Colley, better known by her fans as Minnie Pearl, was a comedienne who was a favorite at the Grand Ole Opry for more than half a century. She also was a regular on the television show Hee Haw
She first performed as her alter-ego, the hillbilly jokester Minnie Pearl, at an Aiken venue in 1939. Mrs. Ola Hitt, 99, who worked at Surasky’s Women’s Store remembers the day when Minnie walked in and bought the soon-to-be famous hat. She wore it right out of the store with the price tag, marked $1.98, still dangling from it. That very hat is now on permanent display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
During the Carolina Beach Music era in the mid-to-late 1960s, three young men formed a group called The Intruders that made its way from the Friday night sock hops at Aiken’s Teen Town to opening for some of the most famous bands of that era.
Mike Stewart, Stuart Harris and Archie Jordan developed their music by combining the styles of the forties, fifties and sixties with the regional music of African-American rhythm and blues. Using horns and drums, along with acoustic and electric guitars, The Intruders entertained audiences at the Myrtle Beach Pavilion in the heyday of the genre. The swing dance known as the shag, or the Carolina shag, is the official state dance of both North Carolina and South Carolina and developed alongside the Beach Music played by the Aiken locals. All three men eventually wrote and recorded songs with musicals stars ranging from Ronnie Milsap to The Pointer Sisters to BJ Thomas, winning multiple Grammy’s and Gold Records along their way.
These are just a few of the many musicians who have made Aiken a center for cultural and artistic expression. Others such as Andy Williams, Niles Borop, Brenda Lee, and Jesse Colin Young have also found Aiken an excellent place to make beautiful music.
Days Inn Downtown Aiken Video : Aiken, South Carolina, United States
Days Inn Downtown Aiken Video : Aiken, South Carolina, United States
Property Location With a stay at Days Inn Downtown Aiken in Aiken, you'll be convenient to Aiken Golf Club and Hitchcock Woods. This motel is within close proximity of Aiken Center for the Arts and Aiken County Historical Museum.Rooms Make yourself at home in one of the 40 air-conditioned rooms featuring microwaves. Complimentary wireless Internet access is available to keep you connected. Conveniences include desks and coffee/tea makers, and you can also request rollaway/extra beds.Rec, Spa, Premium Amenities Enjoy the recreation opportunities such as a seasonal outdoor pool or make use of other amenities including complimentary wireless Internet access.Dining A complimentary continental breakfast is served daily.Business, Other Amenities Free self parking is available onsite.
Check-in from 14:00 , check-out prior to 11:00
Parking, 24 hours Front Desk Service, Swimming Pool, Business centre, Gym, Laundry service.
TV, Air conditioning.
Hotel adress: 1204 Richland Avenue West, Aiken, United States
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The Yellow House on Park and The Battle of Aiken
A mere two months before the end of the war, in February of 1865, Aiken residents lived in terror. It had been their governor, Francis Pickens, who sanctioned the start of conflict. The people of South Carolina, along with those in her sister state of Georgia, had suffered for that action. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, and his troops, had burned and destroyed houses, farms and factories on his “March to the Sea” from Atlanta to Savannah. While resting his troops in Savannah, it is reported that he declared, “When I go through South Carolina, it will be one of the most horrible things in the history of the world. The devil himself could not restrain my men in that state.” Sherman fixed his sights on the capital of South Carolina next. Columbia would pay the debt that he believed the South owed the Union.
He sent out a detachment of the Fifth US Calvary, led by General Judson Kilpatrick toward Aiken, burning the towns of Blackville and Barnwell as he went. Sherman said of Kilpatrick in 1864, I know that Kilpatrick is a hell of a damned fool, but I want just that sort of man to command my cavalry on this expedition. General Kilpatrick’s soldiers were sent to destroy the railroad up to Hamburg, the textile mills in Graniteville and the paper mill in Bath (located in the valleys of Aiken). They were also directed to take out a powderworks plant in Augusta. Cloth used for making Confederate uniforms and paper used for the printing of Confederate money came from the mills and gunpowder, critical to the Confederacy, was manufactured in Augusta.
Stationed at the former home of one of the architects of Aiken, in the Vale of Montmorenci, Kirkpatrick entered the village of Aiken on February 11, 1865. He expected no major obstacles to slow down his mission but he was greeted, instead, by the Confederate detachment led by General Joseph Wheeler.
General Wheeler set up his headquarters at 204 Park Avenue, a modest frame house with an open porch built for Dr. W. H. Harbors just five years earlier in 1860. Although the Federal soldiers outnumbered the Confederates by nearly 1,000 men, Wheeler counted on the element of surprise to push back Kilpatrick’s attack. He stationed his men at the old freight depot on Williamsburg Avenue and his plan would have worked flawlessly except for a premature shot accidentally issued by one of his men that alerted the advancing troops. In spite of the mishap, Wheeler attacked at that moment anyway. Most of the action occurred on Richland Street, in front of the First Baptist Church. All in all, 59 shells were fired on the village of Aiken. But the Federal troops retreated after several hours of fighting and General Wheeler claimed the victory in “The Battle of Aiken”. Kilpatrick did not accomplish the directives of his mission.
The American Civil War claimed the lives of at least 620,000 soldiers and thousands of civilian casualties.
Immanuel School
In 1881, when Reverend W. R. Coles brought his wife and five children to Aiken, it had only been 16 years since the end of the Civil War. That was a very short time for the people who had lived for more than four centuries in slavery to get their bearings in the “new” South and find promising directions in which to make progress. Reverend Coles was a missionary of the African American Presbyterian Missions for Freedmen. His first assignment was to begin a church. Then, he was to establish a school in Aiken that ministered not only to the basic educational needs of his students, but to also give his students the competitive skills they would need to be successful in various types of industry.
Reverend Coles began his small church school in a cramped, six-room house he rented on Newberry Street. He taught reading, writing and math as well as specific job skills for trades like shoe repair and blacksmithing. One of the things that set Reverend Coles’ program apart from the others of that time was music. It was a valued part of his curriculum. The inclusion of singing and piano classes made his school unique. As the number of students increased, it was evident that a bigger facility needed to be constructed to accommodate the growing school. Former slaves, like Vincent Green and his mother, contributed money to purchase the property on York Street in 1882. Construction of a huge, white building, with a covered, gingerbread-style entrance, began on the land. It was finally completed in 1889 and is still standing in that same location today.
When, at last, the doors of the Immanuel Institute opened, it was both a church and a school. It also had a dormitory for students who did not live close enough to the school to attend classes. By 1901, there were 11 instructors and 206 students. Although Immanuel Institute was closed for several years when Reverend Coles resigned his position in 1909, he had seen his school meet the needs of his students and flourish for more than two decades.
In 1911, the Reverend James Jackson reopened the school. Immanuel Institute was renamed the Andrew Robertson Institute and was in continuous operation until 1934. Some Aiken residents who attended the “Jackson School,” as it was known during the 1920s and 30s, recalled fond memories of daily life at the school including participating in various pageants in the large assembly room at the top of the stairs. The classes were very small compared to class sizes of today. Only six to eight students were in any one class at a time. Every day, students attended a devotional service where singing and music were featured.
There was no cafeteria at the school but the students who did not bring their lunch could walk the three blocks to buy food from the shops on Laurens Street. Jackson School was a private school and tuition was charged. However, as the former students recalled, arrangements were always structured so that parents would be able to make the payments for their children after they had been compensated for their cotton crops. Sometimes the students themselves would have to leave their studies during the cotton-harvesting season in order to help their families with the finances associated with attending the school.
Over the years, the Immanuel Institute housed a number of classes that ranged from music to machine repair. It was even used as a movie theater for a short time until an African-American sect of the Catholic Church, the Redemptorist Fathers, purchased the building in 1942 to begin the St. Gerard Parish. Their new mission was to serve the black apostolate of Aiken. The second floor was remodeled into a church with plans for the first floor to be used as a school. They never received adequate funding to complete all of their plans.
After St. Gerard’s closed in 1964, there were several businesses, including a Salvation Army store, on the site. In 2003 it was abandoned and the beautiful, old building was in desperate need of attention. As one of the oldest, historical structures in town, a group of concerned citizens and businesses worked together to preserve the old Immanuel Institute building. In 2004, it was purchased to become the site for the Center for African American History, Art & Culture (CAAHAC). The goal of the center is to preserve and present the cultural legacy of the African-American Diaspora and to chronicle the many contributions of African-Americans in Aiken County. CAAHAC has received many state and federal grants and, today, the building has been completely restored. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The plans at the present time are for the Center to open to the public, allowing visitors an opportunity to experience the cultural contributions of African-Americans in Aiken and experience the character of the building itself.
Aiken and The Hope Diamond
The Hope Diamond is a 45.52 carat stone that is shrouded in mystery. No one really knows for sure when or where it was first discovered, but there’s lots of speculation as to its origins. It wasn’t even known as “The Hope Diamond” until the 20th century and its journey across the globe has only added to its mystique and to its legend.
The Tavernier Blue Diamond, which is thought to be the entire 115 carat stone from which the Hope was eventually taken, was a coarsely-cut, triangular-shaped stone . A French merchant named Jean-Baptist Tavernier returned from his travels, from India between the years of 1640 to 1667, to Europe with his magnificant treasure. Gem historians surmise, that it was mined from the Kollur Mine in the Guntur district of Andhra Predesh, India.
One of the most exciting tales about the stone is that it may have been pried from one of the matching blue diamond eyes of a Hindu idol by Tavernier. As punishment for his great disrespect, the temple priests cast a terrible curse upon whomever should come into possession of the diamond. This idea has been largely debunked by historians who cite, as their first premise, that the matching blue diamond eye has never surfaced.
In 1669, King Louis XIV of France bought the Tavernier Blue and had it cut down from its original 115 carats to 67 1/8 carats. From that time it was called the Blue Diamond of the Crown or simply “The French Blue”. King Louis XV had the French Blue, at the urging of his wife Marie Antoinette, set into a more elaborate jewelled pendant for the Order of the Golden Fleece. Although she never actually wore it, she is cited as one of the most famous victims of “the curse”.
Eventually, the name “The Hope Diamond” was given to it when it became part of a large gem collection owned by Henry Philip Hope. Evalyn Walsh McLean acquired the diamond in 1910 after Pierre Cartier dazzeled her by placing the stone into a platinum setting surrounded by a row of sixteen alternating “Old Mine Cut “and pear-shaped diamonds.
Evalyn was the only daughter of an Irish immigrant who struck it rich in the silver mines of Colorado and became a multimillionaire. She married Edward Beale McLean, in 1908 and became heir to the Washington Post and Cincinnati Enquirer publishing fortune. Although they divorced in 1929, Evalyn never parted with her “blue”. As a winter colonist in Aiken, she wore the massive diamond to decorate her gowns and her swim suits; to appreciate art and to dig weeds out of her garden; to attend concerts and to adorn her dog’s collar. People who knew Evalyn said that she was always misplacing it, only to recruit the help of friends and family into a “game” of finding it again.
Mrs. McLean’s heirs sold it to Harry Winston, who in turn donated to the Smithsonian. Today the Hope Diamond is in the permanant collection at the Institute in the National Museum of Natural History. It is visited by millions of people each year.
In 2009, the Smithsonian is celebrating a half-century of public viewing by giving the stone a new setting that was selected by on-line, participant voting.
Aiken Was the Asparagus Capital
There are many acres of farmland surrounding the town of Aiken, South Carolina. There are even areas within the city limits, plots consisting of only an acre or two, that are regularly rotated with corn, soybean, and cotton crops throughout the year. But few people today realize that less than a century ago, Aiken was known as one of the “Asparagus Capitals” of the United States.
From the mid-18th through the mid-20th centuries, cotton was the predominant crop all over the South and Aiken was no exception. Just prior to the beginning of the Civil War, cotton comprised nearly 60 percent of all American exports. King Cotton was the phrase made world famous by (then) Senator (and future Governor) James Henry Hammond, the owner of Redcliff Plantation in Beech Island. Beech Island is in Aiken County and Senator Hammond was trying to call attention to the fact that European industry heavily depended on the cotton supplied to it by the South. The majority of the labor used to cultivate cotton was provided by enslaved people. Hammond, along with scores of other plantation owners, hoped that buyers of southern cotton would fight against the blockade enacted by Abraham Lincoln’s federal forces. Southerners were sure that their cotton exports were of such great importance that Europeans would surely back the South in the event of a civil war.
But by 1865, the outcome of the Civil War had planters looking at their commercial ventures in a new way. For the farmer, the warm, sandy soil of Aiken was good for growing a large variety of other crops, and farmers broke their dependence on cotton, desperately trying to locate another “King” crop. The first reference to asparagus being grown as a commercial crop in South Carolina can be found in a small pamphlet published in Orange Judd County, New York in 1903. According to the information in the pamphlet, Asparagus, its Culture for Home and for Market, the crop was first grown commercially in Charleston. The name of the specific variety being produced was “Palmetto.’ It was cultivated especially to flourish in the southern climate and soon the specialized variety spread into Aiken, Williston and Bamburg Counties. By 1918, the Clemson University Department of Agricultural Economics reported that there were about 1,100 acres of asparagus under cultivation in the state. By 1937, the number of acres had increased to 8,700.
The asparagus is a member of the lily family of plants and the edible stalks develop from a “crown” that is set about one foot deep in the soil. Once a crown is planted, it takes about three years for it to grow a strong enough root system for the first asparagus harvest. Then, depending on the weather conditions, a stalk can grow a full ten inches in one 24-hour period. Asparagus stalks are harvested for about six to seven weeks during the late spring. After the harvesting season is finished, some spears are left to grow into ferns. The ferns produce bright, red berries during the summer that provide nutrients necessary for a healthy and productive crop during the next season.
Although people locally enjoyed fresh asparagus, most of it was sent to New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D. C. From the 1920s through the mid-1950s, asparagus was gathered daily and shipped, by train, to its Northern destinations. Often the delicate spears were wrapped in Spanish moss gathered from the live oak trees that abound in the city. There was even a cannery in Allendale, about 50 miles from Aiken, where the asparagus was processed. Although the crop flourished commercially for almost 30 years, asparagus production slowed in 1953. World War II may have lessened the workforce available to farm the crop or, perhaps, the marketing success from the California competitors was more effective than South Carolina’s. It is also possible that the varieties grown in Aiken, and its surrounding areas, were more susceptible to diseases that weakened the crops.
Although there are still several farms near Aiken that grow asparagus, the time of the “King Asparagus” is over for the present.
Suffrage and Mrs. Salley
The definition of the word “suffrage” means the right to vote. It’s most commonly associated with women's suffrage. The struggle for right to vote for women began to become visible in the mid-19th Century when various women across the United States started to speak publically about their intention to be granted voting priviledges. It was a movement that slowly gained momentum at state and local levels. Early in the 20th Century, women marched in parades and used what money they could raise to bring attention to the effort.
Eulalie Chaffee Salley was a Southern woman who lived in Aiken and was married to Julian Salley, Sr. Mr. Salley was the mayor of Aiken in the winter of 1909, when a court case came to the attention of Eulalie. Lucy Tillman Dugas, a resident of Edgefield that was not more than 20 miles from Aiken, had lost the custody of her two young daughters. As Mrs. Tillman was fighting an illness while on a trip to Washington, D. C., her husband - B.R. Tillman, Jr. - had found a loophole in a South Carolina law that allowed him to “deed” their children to his parents.
Eulalie was infuriated and concerned, as were thousands of other women all across the United States. The fact that children were legally the property of their fathers and that their mothers had no rights to them, under the law, spurred Eulalie to action. At the age of twenty-nine, with two small children of her own, she joined the South Carolina Equal Suffrage League (SCESL) by sending a dollar in response to an advertisement she found in a Columbia paper. “That was the best dollar I ever spent,” Eulalie was to repeat over and over as she rose in the ranks of the organization.
She attended huge conventions nationally and staged outlandish events locally that mortified her husband and other conservative men in Aiken. Ultimately, however, she raised large amounts of money for the advancement of women’s suffrage. She even obtained a real estate license, in part, so she could personally fund the cause. In 1919, Eulalie was elected the SCESL president.
Finally, in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed. It assured: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. It was ratified nationally on August 18, 1920. After that date, each state was could ratify it individually by a vote of its representative. It was rejected by the State of South Carolina in 1920.
Eulalie was disappointed but worked steadily, while becoming a prosperous businesswoman in her own right, to persuade legislatures to pass the Nineteenth Amendment into State law. It wasn’t until July 1st, 1969, that she was able to witness that all of her effort, more than a half-a-century’s worth, had come to fruition. At 85 years old she stood and watched, over his shoulder, as Governor McNair finally signed the amendment.
She had triumphed at last through steadfast dedication, faith in her dream and by using a great deal of creativity to bring women’s rights into focus.
A Woman with a Vision: Martha Schofield
When the Civil War came to an end in April of 1865, there was a time of rebuilding all over the southern part of the United States. Aiken, South Carolina was no exception. Some of the people who came to help in the federally-guided Reconstruction came from the Northern part of the country and they did so because their religious faith prompted them to participate in it. One such person was a woman named Martha Schofield, She was born in 1839 in Buck’s County, Pennsylvania and was raised as a Quaker.
The Religious Society of Friends, also known as “Quakers”, began in England in the 1600s. When Quakers first came to America, they (along with other European immigrants) owned slaves. Eventually in the mid-1700s, leaders of The Friends signed a document that stated: To bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against. Their efforts brought an end to the importation of slaves in the Northern states. By 1804, most slavery had been abolished in the New England colonies; the states of the Middle Atlantic area, and the territories in the Northwest. But in the Southern states, including South Carolina, slavery was still legal. The Quakers worked, with other abolitionists, to create a system of people and places - called “The Underground Railroad” - that aided slaves in escaping their captivity.
Martha was a young woman of 25 when, in 1865, she decided to spend her life helping people who had been enslaved. Martha went to work for The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands – often called “The Freedmen's Bureau. It had been created by Congress to (among other services) provide food and medicine for people after the war and to establish schools. She took her life savings of a little more than $400 and set out for the islands off the coast of South Carolina. St. Helena Island was the place where scores of former slaves had found refuge from the danger of the plantations during the war. Many former slaves did not know how to read or write. Unfortunately, because of the tropical climate and the many diseases that are carried by mosquitoes, Martha fell ill. She wanted to continue her work and had heard that Aiken offered a healthier climate. She soon moved to Aiken to continue her teaching in a place where she could also recover.
When she arrived in Aiken in 1868, Martha took her money and bought two acres of land on the east side of what is today, York Street. She began work on her plans for a “Normal” school, a school that teaches its students to become teachers themselves; and an “Industrial” school, a school that teaches occupational skills. When the Schofield School opened in 1870, every child was taught the basic skills of reading, writing and math. However, the boys learned additional skills such as how to be blacksmiths, shoemakers and carpenters and the girls were taught “home skills” like cooking and sewing. One of Schofield’s students, Dr. Matilda Evans, eventually gained recognition throughout the country as the state’s first female, African-American physician.
The school was very successful but it was hard to keep it afloat with the meager funds supplied by the government. There were lots of monies donated by people from the North as seen in fund raising efforts from school brochures of that time. Susan B. Anthony, a famous women’s suffrage leader, was just one of the many people who sent financial aid to Schofield School. The AME Church in Aiken also raised money and provided the support necessary to keep the doors from closing. Miss Schofield often allowed families to trade goods and services to pay for student expenses. She became a well-loved and well-respected immigrant to the South.
On the eve of her 77th birthday on Feb. 1, 1916, Martha died during a nap. A very large birthday party had been planned to honor her remarkable life that evening with more than 300 people attending. But instead, when it was discovered that she had died, the school bell rang loudly to alert everyone of her passing.
Three days later, her casket was placed on a train car at the depot in Aiken to be shipped back to her home state of Pennsylvania for burial in her family’s plot. Many of the people who had been waiting to celebrate her birthday, were there to say goodbye to their beloved teacher. With tearful respect, the spiritual “Steal Away” began to be sung and soon the entire station was filled with a heartfelt tribute to a woman who spent her adult life pursuing her vision of helping those who had been the victims and the refugees of the Civil War.
Today, the only portion of the original Schofield School is the white bell tower that kept students on schedule and announced the passing of its founder.
William Gregg and Aiken’s First Peaches
William Gregg was born in Monongalia County, West Virginia, in 1800.
After he made his fortune in Charleston, from his success as a watchmaker, a silversmith, an importer, and from his inheritance; he began to write a series of articles that appeared in the Charleston Courier. These articles outlined ways that men of business in the South could invest in manufacturing. Gregg wrote about his belief that the area should stop depending on agriculture as the only means of commerce. Later those articles were consolidated into a pamphlet called Essays on Domestic Industry and made Gregg the leading advocate for industrialization. It was his personal involvement with a Vaucluse mill that spurred him to move from Charleston to Aiken to begin work on his most deeply held dream of helping poor, southern people prosper in a structured mill village.
Gregg was quite a wealthy man when he made Aiken his permanent home in 1845. He was ready to show that his ardent belief in rescuing the South from a reliance on plantation agriculture could become a reality. Many people who didn’t own their own land could not read or write. They had no specific skills other than working on other people’s farms and found it difficult to provide for themselves and their families. The Graniteville Manufacturing Company Mill and village were constructed on the banks of Horse Creek – then Edgefield County and today, Aiken County – six miles from the City of Aiken. Gregg’s project was named “Graniteville” because the main material used to construct it was granite that was mined from a local quarry.
Graniteville had the huge cotton mill as the center of the town. Gregg had houses built for the workers that were affordable for them to rent and that were maintained by the company. There were village doctors to take care of illness. Parents were responsible, as employees of the mills, to make sure their children attended the school in the village. Many children of that era were forced to work by the age of eight or nine, but Gregg’s “compulsatory school” meant that parents could not work for the mill if their children did not attend regularly. Shortly after the mill opened in 1849, with the village in place, Graniteville became one of the most successful textile factories in the entire southern part of the United States.
As he witnessed so many of his personal theories of industrialization thrive, Gregg drove his buggy up the hill from Graniteville to his home named “Kalmia”. It was built on the summit of the highest hill in the town of Aiken. On the corner of what is today Richland and Summit, his large house stood. It was one of the first in town to have “illuminating gas” running throughout it that provided light other than that which came from candles or oil lamps.
The one interest that William Gregg enjoyed above all others was that of gardening. But since he was very energetic, as well as a man on the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, he approached gardening with the same enthusiasm as he did everything else in his life. On the 100 acres on which his house stood, he first planted 2,000 peach trees in front of it in 1857. Gregg regularly attended meetings with Governor James Hammond at the Beech Island Farmer’s Club to confer with other growers and apply what he’d learned from them to make his crop flourish.
Gregg wanted his peach orchard to demonstrate the success that could be accomplished by South Carolina farmers and soon he began shipping his fruit, each peach individually wrapped and packed, by night train from the nearby Kalmia Station. The peaches traveled to Charleston, where they were transferred to a steamer ship and taken directly to New York City. People there bought the fruit as soon as it arrived. Gregg’s Aiken grown peaches had the reputation in New York as being the freshest peaches available. There was a mere three days elapsing between picking the peaches off the tree in Aiken to being able to eat them 800 miles away.
Right before the start of the Civil War, Gregg planted some 6,000 more peach trees on terraces that sloped to the east behind his house. Entries from his personal diary show that he mostly grew the Tillotson variety of peach. He also mentions that he “grafted Chinese peaches”. All tolled, Gregg had a combined orchard of 8,500 trees. He was the first, commercial peach farmer in South Carolina, as well as the “Father of the Southern Textile Industry”.
So less than two hundred years ago, on what is land today that hosts businesses such as Walmart, Aiken Regional Medical Center, the University of South Carolina Aiken and hundreds of private homes; there were once thousands of peach trees that supplied fruit to both local and national consumers.
Fred Astaire in Aiken
Fred Astaire will always be remembered as one of the most famous dancing movie stars of all time. During the height of his popularity in the 1930s and 40s, he spent much of his free time in Aiken. Although he owned a house in Beverly Hills, he wanted to escape the hectic life of a star to focus on his family in the quiet and relative anonymity of this small southern town.
Frederick Austerlitz, was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1899 to parents who immigrated to the United States from Germany just a few years before his birth. His mother, Johanna, dreamed of escaping the mundane life of Nebraska by promoting her children in a vaudeville dancing act when his sister, Adele, showed an early talent for singing and dancing. Although young Fred wouldn’t take dancing lessons, he quickly learned the steps his sister showed him. Astaire was the stage name they adopted in 1905 in preparation for the start of their dancing career. By the next year, Fred and Adele were touted as the “greatest child act in vaudeville.”
As they traveled across the country, young Fred was inspired to add a freestyle type of tap dance to his repertoire after meeting Bill Bojangles Robinson. From another vaudeville performer, he mastered the tango, waltz, and various dances that were popular at the time. By 1933, he signed a contract with RKO pictures and became a favorite dancing partner of Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films. He became a very popular Hollywood “star” who had remained single until he was 34 years old.
It was then that Astaire was married, for the first time, to the 25-year-old Phyllis Livingston Baker. She was a New York socialite whom he had been pursuing for almost two years until she finally agreed to marry him. They had two children, Fred, Jr. in 1936 and Ava in 1942. The family began coming to Aiken shortly after they married for much of the year. They stayed at the estate of Mrs. Astaire’s aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Worthington Bull.
As a passionate golfer, Fred found Aiken to be brimming with enthusiastic partners and well-established courses. Thoroughbred horse racing was also very important to him. In 1946, his horse Triplicate, partially trained in Aiken, won the Hollywood Gold Cup and San Juan Capistrano Handicap.
While he played golf, raced horses and relaxed with his family, he also found creative time to work out new dance routines. Pictures in a 1940 issue of Life Magazine show a nimble Fred Astaire leaping high above a polo field and swaying along while watching himself dance on the screen of the Rosemary Movie Theater on Laurens Street. The story most often told by locals is how he would arrive early each morning to pick up his mail at the main post office and then lightly dance down the ten or so steps while a crowd of excited onlookers watched with delight.
Fred Astaire’s career, in all, spanned a full 76 years during which he made 31 films. He continued to play golf and be active well into his eighties. When he died in 1987, his friend, and fellow dancing star, Gene Kelly said, The history of dance on film begins with Astaire.
Edgewood: Time Traveler
The Southern plantation home that now sits on the campus of the University of South Carolina in Aiken is a time traveler. It seems as if Edgewood, its original name, has been following people around who have been key participants in important historical events.
The house was originally built in about 1829, outside of the town of Edgefield, about twenty miles north of Aiken for Francis Wilkinson Pickens. It took about three years for Edgewood to be completed. Enslaved men, of whom the Pickens owned more than 500, skillfully built the house that was held together by hand-forged nails. Edgewood has been called, “the last and perhaps the greatest house of the Federal period built in South Carolina”.
Over the next twenty-eight years, Edgewood was the epitome of a southern plantation. Francis’ first and second wives died by 1852, leaving him alone to rear four daughters. He was quite active politically, running for the State Senate in 1856 and being a vocal advocate in the secession movement proposed by his mentor, John C. Calhoun.
In the summer of 1857, he met Lucy Petway Holcombe, a 25 year-old Texas beauty with whom he instantly fell in love. They married in 1858. Their daughter, named Douschka –- Little Darling in Russian -- by her godmother Tzarina Alexandra, was born soon after their arrival in St. Petersburg. Upon returning to Edgewood in 1860, Francis was immediately appointed to the post of governor by the South Carolina Senate.
Even though Governor Pickens tried to calm the rising anger after South Carolina's secession, to prevent War from breaking out, the events that had led up to the Civil War were beyond his personal control. On April 12, 1861, the conflict officially began when the order was given for Confederate forces to fire on the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter. His term ended in 1862 and he retired to Edgewood. Francis Pickens was one of the few Confederate leaders who never received a pardon for his part in the Civil War. He died in 1869 in debt and despair.
His wife, Lucy Pickens, was famous as the “quintessential Southern belle”. She sold her jewelry and finery to fund a Civil War company named in her honor and was the only woman to ever have her image on Confederate money. After the death of her husband, she had a reputation as a free-spirited hostess who opened the doors of Edgewood to many friends and acquaintances. Her maidservant and friend, Lucinda, was her constant companion. She helped to raise Douschka as if she was her own child. Douschka became a famous figure to Reconstruction advocates as a result of her ride with the Red Shirts: a band of malcontents who intimidated freed-slaves attempting to exercise their new emancipation voting privileges in 1876. She died of a fever in 1893. Lucy died in 1899 and Lucinda passed away just six days after Lucy.
Douschka’s daughter, Lucy Pickens Tillman, lived at Edgewood after her marriage in 1903. The controversy that surrounded her changed the lives of many women in the first part of the twentieth century. Suffrage leaders and housewives alike joined together to bring Lucy Tillman’s plight to the forefront of the news. Eventually, she won back her rights to her children in a decisive victory in the South Carolina Supreme Court, but she had depleted all of her resources and Edgewood fell into disrepair with no money to sustain its upkeep.
For twenty years it was vandalized and neglected. Exactly one hundred years after it was built, a suffragist named Eulalie Salley bought Edgewood from the Tillman estate. She was one of the first real estate women in South Carolina and a dedicated proponent of women’s rights. Although it was in the midst of the Great Depression, Eulalie found the money to have the house moved to Kalmia Hill in Aiken. She had it disassembled and personally numbered each board as it was removed. Then Edgewood was reassembled and set on top of an existing antebellum wine cellar. She replaced the woodwork that had been stolen and tracked down the original crystal chandeliers that had been a gift to Lucy and Francis from the Tsar.
Eulalie was famous in Aiken. Her clients were some of the most well known Northern industrialists of the era. Once more, Edgewood became the center of social activity. When Eulalie died in 1975, her daughter rented out some of the rooms to university students and professors. It was added to the Historic Register of Homes in 1983 as the “Pickens-Salley House”. Upon her death, Edgewood was again in danger of ruin.
A real estate man bought the old house in 1985. He made plans with local business people and representative from the University of South Carolina Aiken to raise money to have the house moved to the campus. Edgewood was moved one, final time in 1986. Today it has been restored and serves as the Office of the Chancellor at the University.
Days Inn Aiken - Aiken Hotels, South Carolina
Days Inn Aiken 2 Stars Hotel in Aiken, South Carolina Within US Travel Directory Located midway between Columbia, South Carolina and Augusta, Georgia, this budget motel is 12.
9 km from Aiken town centre.
It serves a daily continental breakfast and features an outdoor pool.
Free Wi-Fi access and cable TV with HBO are included in every room at Days Inn Aiken.
They are equipped with a microwave, refrigerator, and coffee-making facilities.
Guests can work in the business centre or use the on-site launderette at the Aiken Days Inn.
The reception is open 24 hours a day and offers free weekday newspapers.
Aiken County Historical Museum is 15 minutes’ drive from the motel.
South Edisto Golf Course is 6.
4 km away.
Days Inn Aiken - Aiken Hotels, South Carolina
Location in : 2654 Columbia Highway, SC 29805, Aiken, South Carolina
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