Winthrop University

Since its founding in 1886, Winthrop University has stood as one of South Carolina’s premiere state institutions, providing education and opportunity to generations of women and men throughout the state and across the country. Education pioneer David Bancroft Johnson had the unique vision of establishing a school for training female teachers in response to a teacher shortage in Columbia and worked earnestly to acquire the necessary funds from Peabody Education Board chairman Robert C. Winthrop, for whom the school is named. Under Johnson’s guidance and care, Winthrop University moved from Columbia to Rock Hill and developed into a university with a national reputation for excellence.

Containing over 200 black-and-white photographs chosen from the Dacus Library’s extensive archives, Winthrop University explores the school’s impressive history, from its founding in the late nineteenth

century to the present. This volume allows readers to meet prominent faculty members throughout the college’s history, stroll along the picturesque campus with its inspiring architecture and historic structures, such as Main Building, Carnegie Library, and Phelps Hall, to name but a few, view the fashionable uniforms and diverse activities of some of the college’s early female students, and relive some of Winthrop’s special traditions of yesteryear, like Classes Night, Rat Week, Greek Day, and Halloween Happening.