Walker Hall, South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind

Since its construction in 1859, Walker Hall, the main building of the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind, has served as the centerpiece of the school’s 160-acre campus. As the school's only remaining nineteenth-century building, Walker Hall reflects the development and expansion of education for the deaf and blind in South Carolina over a period of 150 years. The building is still in use today as the primary building for the school.

The South Carolina Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Blind was established in Cedar Spring in 1849. Like many other early schools for the deaf, the school initially occupied a series of temporary spaces. Classes were first held in the private home of the school’s founder, the Reverend Newton Pinckney Walker, and later in a hotel building in Cedar Spring that Walker purchased for this purpose. After the state added a department for the blind in 1855, also at Walker’s urging, Walker successfully petitioned the state legislature to assume full financial responsibility for the school. The school became part of South Carolina’s educational system in 1856.

In the hands of the state, the school could expand beyond the single building that it occupied. After becoming a state institution in 1856, the school and 157 acres of Walker’s land was purchased by South Carolina, which appropriated $30,000 for the construction of a “suitable” main building and commissioned noted Charleston architect Edward C. Jones to design a new building for the school. Jones designed the central pavilion and east wing of the new three-story Italianate main building, completed in 1860 at a cost of $32,000. Executed in brick with a wide cornice, gallery arcades, and a central Corinthian portico, the building was initially capped with a central dome (removed in the 1880s and replaced with a mansard roof to accommodate a fourth-floor addition). Jones’s central pavilion contains a skylit, light-filled atrium encircled by balustraded balconies at each floor that provide access to the east wing (and, in 1885, to the west wing addition designed by Samuel Sloan). The fronts of both wings feature a central, recessed gallery with a series of elongated arches.

When the school’s founder and superintendent, the Reverend Walker, died of measles in November 1861 shortly after the construction of the main building, the school operated without a superintendent until 1865. Many schools in the South had closed during this time due to the Civil War, but the South Carolina school remained open through cash donations and contributions of in-kind services. In the years that followed the Civil War, however, the school opened and closed many times as a result of uncertain state finances and disputes regarding segregation before permanently reopening in 1876.  

When a new classroom building was constructed on the campus in 1901, many of Walker Hall’s classrooms were converted into additional dormitories. The Pittman Construction Company added a rear annex (north wing) in 1921 to house a dining room, kitchen, offices, and small auditorium. The main building received some renovations during the 1950s as part of a $500,000 campus-wide modernization and expansion program, but it had fallen into disrepair by the time it was renovated again by McMillan Smith and Partners (MSP) from 2002 to 2004. MSP sought to restore the building to its 1920s condition while also improving accessibility and safety features to meet modern requirements. The restoration included extensive structural reinforcement, repairing and repainting the stucco exterior and plaster interior, and restoring transoms, doors, windows, and floors.  Additions, such as ramps and elevators, were made to improve physical accessibility to comply with ADA requirements. Other improvements included the use of a consistent design pattern, drawn from a Greek-key motif found in the tile of the cafeteria floor, to demarcate walkways for the visually impaired, and the addition of enhanced audio/visual systems, special lighting for interpreters, and emergency awareness systems for students with sensory disabilities.

Walker’s son, N. F. Walker, recorded a history of the school, “History of the South Carolina Institution for the Education of the Deaf and the Blind,” in Histories of American Schools for the Deaf, 1817–1893, edited by Edward Allen Fay, vol. 1. (Washington, D.C.: The Volta Bureau, 1893).

Walker Hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. The South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind, which was racially integrated in 1966, continues to serve students statewide through on-campus and outreach programs. As the main building on the school’s campus, Walker Hall is noteworthy as an antebellum educational building still used for its original purpose today.