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Welcome to Greenville, South Carolina
Greenville, SC provides excellent choices for shopping, entertainment, restaurants, and more. Popular local attractions in Greenville include Haywood Mall, the Greenville Motor Mile, Shoppes at Greenridge, the Peace Center, Greenville Drive baseball, the West End of Greenville, Downtown Greenville, Thornblade Country Club, Woodruff Road, Poinsett Hotel, the Hyatt, and Paris Mountain.
Other favorite places around Greenville are BMW Zentrum, BI-LO Center, Roper Mountain Science Center, Liberty Bridge, Furman University, Flour Field at the West End, and Greenville Tech.
Greenville is known for its major routes through the county which are populated by dense residential and commercial development, including Augusta Road, Woodruff Road, Laurens Road, Pleasantburg Drive, Haywood Road, North Main Street, Poinsett Highway, and I-385.
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Greenville Timeline
1900 — Greenville Traction Company started construction of first electric railway and the first streetcar ran on Jan. 12, 1901.
1908 — Shoeless Joe Jackson became nationally famous as a major league baseball player.
1911 — Beth Israel Congregation founded with Charles Zaglin as first rabbi; Main Street bridge over Reedy River opened to traffic.
1915 — Southern Textile Show, Greenville's first, held in November.
1917 — First Textile Hall opened on West Washington Street.
1918 — Miss James Margrave Perry becomes first woman admitted to SC Bar
1919 — Phillis Wheatley Association organized by Hattie Duckett.
1921 — Greenville Public Library established
1923 — Greenville's first skyscraper, built on Main St. by banker Robert Woodside. This skyscraper was home to Woodside National Bank when it opened and was the tallest building in North and South Carolina at the time.
1925 — Poinsett Hotel opens
1942 — Greenville Air Force Base, renamed Donaldson in 1951, opens.
1945 — About 15,000 people viewed train carrying body of Franklin D. Roosevelt at West Washington Street station.
1947 — Bob Jones University moves to Greenville from Cleveland, Tenn.
1951 — Eighty-two school districts in county consolidated into one.
1958 — Furman University relocated Men's College from downtown Greenville to new school on Poinsett Highway; the Woman's College moved in 1960.
2004 — Liberty Bridge opens in revitalized West End district.
2005 — I-385 widening project completed and open to traffic with 3 lanes and lovely trees in the median!
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History of Greenville Overview
With some of the nation's largest textile mills constructed on the city's western edge from the turn of the century to the 1930s, Greenville's "textile crescent" attracted more than 40,000 workers to weaving, spinning and doffing jobs.
Cars and trolley cars started making the downtown scene in the early 1900s, and Greenville was well on its way to becoming the Upstate's economic center. The county's population by 1900 had grown to 53,487.
During that period, cookie-cutter mill houses on a number of villages and two-story Victorian homes for Greenville's well-to-do families on Pendleton, West Washington, Hampton and Pinckney streets dominated the landscape.
With the expansion of textile mills and railroads and the daily migration of newcomers, Greenville was laying the early foundation of the metropolitan, industrial and commercial center it would later become.
A daily newspaper called The Greenville News was established in 1874 by A.M. Speights. A weekly paper called The Mountaineer that had been published in Greenville since 1829 later became The Greenville Piedmont, a daily. It was purchased by B.H. Peace and his sons, owners of The Greenville News, in 1927 and the two papers merged in 1995.
During World War I, the army opened Camp Sevier outside the city, and more than 100,000 soldiers were trained there. A building boom paralleled the military growth, and progressives started a library system, expanded medical facilities and social service centers.
The Army Air Base (Donaldson) brought thousands of airmen to Greenville after World War II, and national companies purchased local textile mills and sold off their villages.
Postwar Greenville grew rapidly with industrial development led by Charles Daniel. Greenville Technical College opened in 1967. Civil rights tensions in the 1960s led to the organization of biracial committees to work together and ensure that racial unrest would not harm growth.
A.V. Huff, author of a history of Greenville, wrote that the Federal Highway Act of 1956 had as profound an influence on the region as the development of the railroads.
Sources: Historic Greenville Foundation; Richard Sawyer's "10,000 Years of Greenville County, South Carolina, History"; and "Famous Greenville Firsts."; Greenville News and GreenvilleOnline.com
Thank you for visiting ExploreGreenville.com.
The Official Guide to Greenville, South Carolina and the Upstate Lifestyle.
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