Adaptive building reuse is huge in Columbia these days. From long abandoned buildings like the Bull Street complex to the Curtiss-Wright hangar, places are being rehabilitated from scary old piles of brick to fancy restaurants, breweries, and apartments. I recently went on a Behind the Scenes tour with Historic Columbia to see what was going on in the long-abandoned building that many longtime Columbians remember as Hennessy's.
The building at 1649 Main has been being kind of worked on for what seems like a year or two at least, and the future tenants are hopeful that they might be operational by late October (looking at these photos you might be scratching your head at that possibility too). But the first tenants to sign on will transform the top floor and the rooftop into Hendrix. The street level floor and the basement with courtyard below have not yet had tenants sign on, and it could be one or two, depending on who wants to put what in the spaces. Colliers is working to get the right tenants in the space and hopefully they'll give me the scoop on what's going in next.
The ceilings are fantastically ornate. The Garvin Design Group who is working on the building, is trying to retain as many historical details as possible, though many of them are mandated by grants and historical building policies.
The most intriguing part of this tour was seeing how short the ceilings were in this space. There were several Please Duck signs way up high, but back when it was Hennessy's, there was a mezzanine level, making the headspace quite low up there! The hope is to preserve and reuse the original ornate ceilings as much as possible, but as we learned tonight, a lot can change in a design as construction goes on.
The original building dates back to 1865 and was most frequently used as a grocery store, including one run by a Hendrix from Lexington, which is where the name for the new restaurant hails. Before the building held Hennessy's, it was home to Ruff's Hardware.
This is the bottom floor, or the subterranean basement (is that redundant?) that doesn't seem so lower level thanks to doors and windows that were cut out of the space AND literal chunks of the sidewalk that were cut out to let light in and make a courtyard. Here's the view of the courtyard from outside in it. Imagine cute bistro tables and chairs here. From this view, Main Street is directly ahead, and the Richland County Clerk of Court building is to the left. This might be the only building I can think of in the area that will have both underground and rooftop entertainment possibilities!
The cross section where they cut the openings in the sidewalk are fascinating.
Curious about the upcoming restaurant and other tenants? ME TOO. But if you want that news, you'll need to follow it as I find it out at free-times.com/food.
