Thomson Auditorium (a.k.a. The Old Charleston Museum)
One of the first 3D models for the project is this structure that burned down in 1980.
Thomson Auditorium was built in record time (three months!) and completed in 1899 on the site of a park designed by Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot in 1896. (Hover your mouse or click the images for descriptions.)
Thomson Auditorium was built in record time (three months!) and completed in 1899 on the site of a park designed by Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot in 1896. (Hover your mouse or click the images for descriptions.)
For several years after it was donated to the city, Cannon Park was a mess of mud, litter and feral goats. So the city chose Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot to improve the place. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (son of the famous designer of Central Park) and Charles Eliot created a plan for Cannon Park that included an aquatic basin and large pergola with benches beneath for a place to relax and contemplate nature.
The park project was unfinished when construction began on Thomson Auditorium, and it seems that the city of Charleston may have used the concrete base meant for the aquatic basin to create the steps of the auditorium's portico.
Today, all that remains of Thomson Auditorium (a.k.a. the Old Charleston Museum) are those steps and four columns of the portico. Cannon Park is now once again a park.
The 3D model of the auditorium will be completed once measurements for scale and types of building materials and paint colors can be determined.
The park project was unfinished when construction began on Thomson Auditorium, and it seems that the city of Charleston may have used the concrete base meant for the aquatic basin to create the steps of the auditorium's portico.
Today, all that remains of Thomson Auditorium (a.k.a. the Old Charleston Museum) are those steps and four columns of the portico. Cannon Park is now once again a park.
The 3D model of the auditorium will be completed once measurements for scale and types of building materials and paint colors can be determined.
"Dame Nature is a gentlewoman. No guide's fee will obtain you her favour, no abrupt demand; hardly will she bear questioning, or direct, curious gazing at her beauty; least of all, will she reveal it truly to the hurried glance of the passing traveller, ...always we must quietly and unimpatiently wait upon it. Gradually and silently the charm comes over us; the beauty has entered our souls; we know not exactly when or how, but going away we remember it with a tender, subdued, filial-like joy."
- Frederick Law Olmsted
- Frederick Law Olmsted