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A Historical Buzz Around Five Points Village
August 8, 2008
From its inception in the 1920s, Columbia's Five Points district has proved a popular destination for locals and visitors in search of services, food, drink, and socializing. The historic village of Five Points, formed by the intersection of Devine, Harden, Santee, and Saluda streets, is prized for its eclectic blend of restaurants, watering holes, specialty retail stores, and businesses. Nestled within a valley surrounded by the University Hill, Shandon, Wales Garden, and Lower Waverly neighborhoods, today's village is the beneficiary of recent upgrades geared toward ensuring the vitality of what many describe as a funky, eclectic district. Through its blend of architectural styles set within a recently enhanced streetscape featuring newly planted trees, fountains, buried utility lines, and light poles, the Five Points Village currently balances the attributes that set it aside from other city communities with what residents and patrons expect from modern urban life.
While countless businesses have come and gone over the district's storied past, the character of Five Points' physical setting, pace, and landmark buildings and establishments has remained largely the same, enticing new investors and entrepreneurs who appreciate those attributes not found elsewhere within the city. Today, Five Points lies at as much a philosophical crossroads as it does a physical intersection of streets. The issue at hand is how to strike a balance between heightened development and preservation of those characteristics that have made the district so successful thus far. Five Points is abuzz over how this will end. Proponents in each camp spar over what the physical realities of future development might mean. "Mixed-use," "high-density," "scale," "set-back," "pedestrian-friendly," "upscale," and "affordable" - the lexicon of urban planning and preservationists alike has found its way into conversations in the district's bars, coffee houses, boutiques, galleries, and restaurants.
Historic preservation and development can coexist to enhance the quality of life. Only through adaptive reuse of historic properties and through development that is sympathetic to existing assets can the future of those qualities that make Five Points unique be ensured. An historical buzz through Columbia's eclectic village not only gives us an appreciation of what once was, it grants us an informed perspective from which we can better engage in a dialogue over the role Five Points' past will have in determining its future.
If you have historic images or information about Five Points or other historic neighborhoods that you would be willing to share, contact John Sherrer at 803-252-1770, ext. 28, or jsherrer@historiccolumbia.org.
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Click here to visit Historic Columbia's Website.