One of Fort Jackson's oldest landmarks fell Monday morning.
The building that served as the post's headquarters since 1941 is being demolished this week to make room for a park and amphitheater. Despite its unofficial status as a local landmark, the Directorate of Public Works ultimately decided the building had suffered too many modifications over the years to qualify as a legitimately "historic" building.
Many of those modifications were laid bare Monday morning as a bulldozer slowly toppled the structure. Buried in the walls of the 1941 building was a patchwork of technological modifications installed the last 75 years. The fiberglass, aluminum ducts, steel supports and several tons of wood that spilled to the ground in the wake of the bulldozer told the story of a building that had been mended a few times too many. It was no longer a relic of the past, nor suitable for modern use.
The former headquarters building was the product of one of the largest construction efforts undertaken in the Southeast. More than $18 million was spent on construction projects at "Camp Jackson" in the summer of 1940, efforts that resulted in the creation of 3,000 buildings,
400 homes for non-commissioned officers,100 miles of hard-surfaced roads and the post headquarters building the following year.
Last December, command and garrison staff vacated the property, consolidating their offices in the
41,700-square-foot building on Jackson Boulevard that once housed the NCO Academy.
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