FLORENCE, S.C. — An African American landmark in the downtown business district of Florence will soon be given new life as a health-focused community center.
The Streater Building was owned and operated by African Americans as a variety of businesses from when it was built in 1904 to when HopeHealth bought it in 2018. The federally qualified health care provider announced at a dedication on Monday its plans to honor the building’s history by restoring it and using it to host outreach programs focused on seniors, veterans and Black men.
A descendant of General Armstrong and Queen Victoria Plunkett Streater, whom the building is named after, said the plans HopeHealth presented at the dedication were “heartwarming.”
“We were really glad that HopeHealth was inspired by our ancestors in their future ventures for the Streater Building as well as the land around it,” said Marie Osborne, the Streaters’ great-great-granddaughter. “It was actually overwhelming for all of us, including my grandmother. She shed a few tears.”
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The Streaters and their eight children lived in the Streater Building, then made only out of wood, and ran a restaurant, grocery and supply store out of it starting in 1904, according to Stephen Motte, curator of collections and interpretation at the Florence County Museum.
The building is on the northwest corner of Darlington and Dargan streets, near the HopeHealth Medical Plaza.
HopeHealth’s plans
HopeHealth will restore and renovate the building, turning the upstairs into offices and the downstairs into meeting places, according to Gary Brown, HopeHealth associate vice president for planning and facilities.
An add-on to the building will bring a gallery of rotating exhibits exploring the history of the building and of African American culture in Florence.
Two large meeting rooms in the bottom floor will be subdividable, meaning they can be sectioned off into smaller rooms if necessary. The bottom floor will also have conference rooms plus a coffee shop for more informal meetings, Brown said.
The meeting spaces will be used for a number of outreach programs, said Director of External Affairs Nicole Echols.
“It’s not going to be a clinical space, but it’s going to be a space for people to gather and learn,” Echols said. “It will be a community space for education and programs that really emphasize how important it is for men, especially Black men, to get early preventive care and treatment.”
The main idea is to give back to the community and give people a space to feel safe talking about health problems, she said.
“If we can have a space where you can talk about your health issues, and you feel comfortable and safe, you’re more likely to get treatment and prevent some long-term diseases,” Echols said.
Community groups can also host their own health-centered events in the space, she said.
The Streater Building will be connected to the Medical Plaza through footpaths. Nearby, an outdoor shaded seating area will be built to provide another meeting place, Brown said.
The existing stormwater detention pond, designed to capture water but drain quickly, will be replaced by a retention pond, which always holds some water, with a fountain. Walking trails for exercise will be built around the pond and the entire plaza.
Building’s history
When HopeHealth bought the building, it enlisted the help of Motte to do some digging into its history. Motte got in touch with Osborne, and the two worked together to track the building’s history through public and family documents.
An interesting discovery quickly arose: The building currently has a carved marble inset above the entrance inscribed with the date 1926 and the words “Streater Building,” but it is likely the Streaters had already left Florence by that time, Motte said.
The family moved to Manhattan, N.Y., but it is unclear why, Osborne said. General Streater owned the Streater Building, the business operating out of it, multiple nearby buildings and farmland in Chesterfield County, and wealthy African Americans did not typically move, she said.
“Why did his family as large as they were, for as many businesses as he had, for the amount of land that he had, why did they just not decide to stay? And then why did they choose Manhattan as the place to go?” Osborne said. “Some of that particular information I’m looking to see and find out, and hopefully I can put the puzzle pieces together.”
The building remains an important landmark in Florence, Motte said, because it is a physical reminder of the past.
“It’s significant because it exists,” he said. “When people make an effort to understand what is physically left behind from history, that’s when you see a greater appreciation for it, because you can write about something that used to exist, but it doesn’t mean as much as something that still physically exists that people can look at and touch and experience.”
After the Streaters, the building changed hands a number of times in its almost 120-year history, but all owners and occupants were African American, according to a history of the building on the museum’s website written by Motte.
The building was the main office of well-known African American physician William Strother from around 1930 to 1945. In the late 1930s, the building was also the office for the “Colored” Florence County farm agent, which organized and oversaw local agricultural education and labor projects.
In the 1940s, the building’s upper floor was used as a boarding house by Sallie Bacote, who rented furnished rooms for around 10years.
The building was mostly vacant through the 1950s, but reopened as the Zanzibar Hotel around 1962. The hotel was managed by Harley and Annie Brown until it closed in the early 1970s.
Before being bought by HopeHealth, the building was likely used as some sort of nightclub with offices upstairs, Motte said.
“The downstairs of the building had been sort of remodeled and abused in a way that made it difficult to really distinguish any historical features, but the upstairs was in pretty decent condition,” he said.
HopeHealth plans to restore the upper floor because it still has its historic features, while the bottom floor will be renovated to be more modern, since it did not have much of its historic architecture left, Brown said.
In 2018, the city of Florence put a state historical marker at the Streater Building to recognize it as a significant community landmark.
