Babcock Cupola Reconstruction
McNicholas Architects · Columbia, SC
Overview
As redevelopment work was under way on the Babcock Building - a former mental hospital slated to become the centerpiece of the new “Bull Street District” - fire broke out, completely destroying its iconic cupola. The signature structure had not been previously documented, yet suddenly required full reconstruction in the developer’s abbreviated timeline. Entrant firm was commissioned to accurately recreate the cupola’s forms from photos alone into the software that facilitated an efficient cap-and-sleeve reconstruction.
The National Historic Register-listed Babcock Building at the South Carolina State Mental Hospital has anchored the northern edge of Columbia since 1885: its iconic, red-domed cupola visible from across the city. Like many similar institutions, the building and its grounds were effectively abandoned by the mid-1990s, falling into disrepair. Fortunately, the property recently found a brave developer to take on the charge of realizing a wholly-new, well- situated and density-adding neighborhood on the property – branded as the “Bull Street District” – with the iconic centerpiece Babcock to become a 208-unit apartment complex. In 2020, with work underway, the building unfortunately caught fire and the entire cupola collapsed. The developer was steadfast in their commitment to the preservation – and now restoration – of the district’s icon, but to meet the tight timelines and construction methods already established, the existing project team required a specialized assist. With nothing more than photos for reference, our firm was commissioned to accurately recreate the distinct forms and details of the original cupola in the Revit format required by the developer, and necessitated by their ornamental fabricator. The drum was executed in a hybrid pre-fab “sleeve-and-cap” fashion, demonstrating the ease with which distinct ornamental forms and the “placemaking” typology of towers and cupolas – rarely considered due to labor and cost impracticalities in recent eras - can once again be incorporated into modern, developer-driven projects.
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