Contributed byHistoric Columbia Foundation

On Tuesday, December 5 County Council voted to approve a $1,025,000 funding request for the restoration of the Woodrow Wilson Family Home. County Council's funding approval is the critical step in the restoration of South Carolina's only presidential home and anchors contributions made by AgFirst Farm Credit Bank, the Bostick Foundation, and other local groups and individuals.

As Historic Columbia Foundation moves forward with the restoration process, John Milner Associates, Inc. out of Louisville, Ky. has been invited to serve as the restoration architect. Principal in charge Charles Raith says that JMA looks forward to beginning the project and anticipates that its completion will be a key piece in creating more heritage tourism in Columbia.

The project will begin with a historical and archaeological investigation of the site that will include the house, gardens, and the long extant out buildings. The garden at the Wilson Family Home will be refurbished based on a historically accurate plan laid out by the Columbia Garden Club in the mid 1980s.

The first steps of the investigation process are scheduled to begin in early February. Currently, the house stands empty with a majority of the collection items being stored at the Columbia Museum of Art.

Once restoration officially begins, the public and media will be invited to join each step of the project in order to better understand the process.

For more information, contact Kaela Harmon at 803.252.7742 ext. 25 or kharmon@historiccolumbia.org.

Historic Columbia was founded in 1961 by a group of preservationists determined to save the Ainsley Hall House, known today as the Robert Mills House. More than four decades later, Historic Columbia manages four historic house museums and their associated artifacts, and tells the stories of people, places and progress in Columbia and Richland County. For more information, please visit www.historiccolumbia.org .