In his book, “Remembering Greenville, Photographs From the Coxe Collection,” author and historian Dr. Jeffrey R. Willis writes, “A city can look forward to a promising future only if its growth is accompanied by a full knowledge of and appreciation for its past.” It is rare, however, for a community the size of Greenville to have a comprehensive recording of its urban landscape, particularly during a time of such historical prominence as the early twentieth century. A handful of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century structures still remain in downtown Greenville, but commercial progress has razed the vast majority, with new offices, roadways, restaurants, and apartments standing in their place. “New construction and new streets have all but erased the Greenville of that time,” writes Willis.
William B. Coxe, a photographer by trade, moved to Greenville at the end of World War I, and almost immediately began to compile a photographic history of his new hometown. He began by purchasing the files of two earlier photographers, James Huntington and William Preston Dowling, while at the same time collecting old photographs from amateurs and individuals. “Having assembled a photographic record of Greenville in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, he spent the next fifty-five years photographing the people and history of his time,” Willis writes.
From churches and private homes to textile mills and structures of seemingly no significance, the Coxe Collection captures a landscape and a lifestyle that has all-but vanished in the wake of urban redevelopment.
Coxe died in 1973 at age 78. In 1989, the Greenville County Historical Society acquired the collections Coxe himself had amassed, in addition to about 120,000 negatives of photos taken by Coxe and his daughter, Isabelle Coxe Cely. Read on for a glimpse of the forgotten landscape of our city through the eyes of William B. Coxe, whose work serves as not only a rare historical treasure, but also a fascinating study of the price of urban renewal.
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