Our Town: A Manor of Taste

As you maneuver the traffic of four-lane Augusta Street, it’s difficult to imagine what the area looked like a hundred years ago. Back then, this commercial thoroughfare was a narrow dirt road, with homes scattered among acres of rolling landscape.

Among its first and most prominent residences at 1004 Augusta Street is the former home of William T. Wilkins and his wife Harriet D. Cleveland. Deemed by historians as the Wilkins mansion, the Mansion House, and, later, Jones Mortuary, the home was built by local contractor Jacob Cagle sometime in the ten years after the Civil War (historians surmise 1868, 1869, or 1876). Wilkins was a Spartanburg native who made a fortune in manufacturing in New York City before joining the Confederate cause in 1861. After the war, he moved back to the northeast for two years and then settled in the Upstate for good, marrying Harriet and purchasing ninety-three acres on Augusta Street for their mansion and surrounding estate.

There’s no disputing that Wilkins, partner with Nelson C. Poe in Greenville’s successful hardware firm Wilkins, Poe & Company, intended for the mansion to reflect the stature and wealth of its tenants. The two-story brick home was mirrored after the manors of the Second Empire of France during the time of Napolean III. It boasts a mansard roof, Corinthian columns, and, during the Wilkins’s residency, a high-ceilinged veranda that wrapped around the entire exterior. The interior was fashioned with hardwood floors, intricate woodwork, grand archways, gas-lit chandeliers, embossed wallpaper, and an elegant, sweeping staircase spiraling up to the owners’ private rooms. Harriet was fond of flora and tended a vast collection of plants and flowers in the home’s north-wing conservatory. She also kept a flock of colorful, preening peacocks outside, to the delight of neighbors and passersby.

A standout residence even during the Wilkins’s time.

But what’s remarkable about the home is that succeeding tenants have kept many of its original features intact. After the death of William Wilkins in 1895, Harriet kept up social graces, hosting lavish dinners and high-society Greenvillians. Upon her death in 1930, her heir, John Norwood Cleveland, acquired the property and leased it to R.D. Jones a couple of years later. Jones refurbished and remodeled parts of the home and took down the barn for a stable of a different sort: his five-car hearse collection that serviced his mortuary.

Jones Mortuary remained there until 2001, when the property (now only four acres) was leased to Brian Lehman, who divvied the home for antiques and specialty shops. Until recently, the mansion’s uncertain future was a concerning prospect for locals who did not want to see such an indispensable aspect of Greenville’s history moved or demolished. Sharon Wells has since taken over the lease and dubbed the home Augusta Manor, renting the space for events and dance classes—a fitting nod to the regal home’s original owners who no doubt were the life of the party.