Adam Stanley graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2020 with a degree in media arts. While studying in Columbia he found the city contained plenty of subject matter for interesting photography projects. He started a social media page, “South Carolina Explorer,” and developed an interest in historic places and abandoned buildings and sites in the local area.
In 2020, Stanley was approached by Sutton Publishing Company, a company based in the United Kingdom and Charleston that is publishing a series called “American Through Time.” The company found Stanley by following his social media site and reached out to him to present the idea of working on a book entitled Abandoned South Carolina: Bygone Places of Columbia. This proposed book was planned to be the second in the series on the subject in South Carolina. Abandoned South Carolina: Forgotten Upstate was published in 2020.
Stanley began work on the book in 2023. He spent a year exploring abandoned sites in Columbia and writing and editing the book for publication. Every photo included in the book was taken by Stanley from 2017 to 2023.
He walked the grounds of the former South Carolina State Hospital on Bull Street and the tunnels underneath Columbia. One tunnel was generally left untouched from its years of use under the grounds of Central Correctional Institute (CCI), the state penitentiary managed by the South Carolina Department of Corrections near the Congaree River in downtown Columbia.
Stanley often used a drone to capture aerial photos of sites such as the abandoned Capital City Stadium, the baseball field that housed local baseball teams in Columbia since 1927. Other sites required a drone due to vegetation overgrowth that obscured them from the public eye over the years.
Along with his photography, Stanley offers brief historical accounts of each site featured in the book that include anecdotes of the past that interest readers and help to tell the story of Columbia’s past.
Stanley writes, “This work is both a tribute and a time capsule—an effort to preserve the stories of these places and the state they were once in before they vanish or transform, as many already have. It offers insight into the factors that led to their abandonment, a question that once intrigued me as I passed by. Most of these locations linger with an uncertain fate today, often caught between demolition and the faint hope of restoration, as their number dwindle year by year.”
Abandoned South Carolina: Bygone Places of Columbia can be purchased on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, on the publishers website, www.throughtime.com, and at All Good Books on Harden Street in Columbia. To follow Adam Stanley’s work on social media, visit his page on Facebook entitled “South Carolina Explorer.”
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