This colored lithograph portrays the horseshoe of South Carolina College as it appeared in 1853, a half century after its founding. An act to establish the College was passed in December of 1801, but Dr. Jonathan Maxcy and the first nine students did not assemble until 1805, in the newly built Rutledge Hall. Borrowing curriculum and faculty from New England, the college followed a classical course of study to which were added the sciences. By 1853, there were eleven buildings arranged in classical symmetry around a wide green, the most remarkable of which was the library, now the South Caroliniana Library, built in 1840 as the first separate college library building in the United States.
Courtesy of the University of South Carolina Archives.
