What to See in Greenville - Top Sights and Attractions

Compact, year-round wildlife menagerie. The Greenville Zoo is a zoo in Greenville, South Carolina, United States. The zoo opened in 1960, and is located at 150 Cleveland Park Drive, near Interstate 385, on a 14-acre site within Cleveland Park.

The zoo's official website states: "A typical visit would last from an hour to an hour and 30 minutes." The zoo is next to Cleveland Park, which contains picnic tables throughout the site, and offers bicycle and walking paths, tennis and volleyball courts, playgrounds for children, and several shelters available by reservation. The zoo is open daily throughout the year except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Christmas Eve and New Year's Day.

The Greenville Zoo is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).^[3]

Nature preserve in Greenville County, South Carolina. Conestee Nature Preserve, formerly Lake Conestee Nature Preserve/Park, opened in 2006, is a 400-acre preserve along three miles of the Reedy River in Conestee, South Carolina, with 13 miles of trails, more than 6 miles of them paved and 1 mile of boardwalk. The Preserve contains both hardwood and evergreen forest, extensive wetlands, and a rich diversity of reptiles, mammals, and birds. At least 223 bird species have been reported, and the National Audubon Society has designated the park as an Important Bird Area of Global Significance. In 2016 the state of South Carolina made the privately owned facility a wildlife sanctuary.

Lake Conestee was created when the Reedy River was dammed at the Conestee Mill in about 1892. At its largest extent, the lake covered about 130 acres (53 ha), but years of upstream industrial waste and discharge filled about 90 percent of the lake with sediment so toxic that the lake was classified as a Superfund site. In 2000 the Conestee Foundation, a 501(c)(3) conservation organization, was formed to lead the revitalization of the lake as a wetlands through the development of the nature preserve, and the foundation used settlement funds from a June 1996 Colonial Pipeline spill to purchase the lake and the dam. Once safety studies of the brownfield were complete, it was determined that no harm would result if the toxic sediment were left in place.

In December 2016, inspectors from the state Department of Health and Environmental Control rated Conestee Dam, which is not keyed into the bedrock, in poor condition due to deterioration of mortar and water seepage.^[4]

Park in Greenville, South Carolina. Cleveland Park is the largest park in Greenville, South Carolina, much of its more than 120 acres being greenway along Richland Creek and the Reedy River near the city's "most elegant neighborhoods."

On December 31, 1924, with encouragement from Greenville Park Commission chairman John Alexander McPherson, prominent Greenvillean William Choice Cleveland donated a crescent-shaped 110 acres on the southeast side of town to be used as a park and playground, a recreational area he hoped would complement his new housing development, Cleveland Forest, and would include an equestrian park and paddocks where residents could board their horses. (Stables managed by private owners existed adjacent to the park until they were demolished in 2014.) In 1925, the city of Greenville created two baseball fields, a horse ring, and a playground, and the park officially opened on January 1, 1926.

By 1928, during the administration of Mayor Richard Watson, when a $110,000 bond issue to develop the park was approved, the park was surveyed at 126 acres. Land around the river was boggy and prone to flooding, a deficiency partially remedied during the Great Depression when the WPA channelized the river bed, greatly improving drainage.

In its earliest years the park included a Girl Scout meeting place and a nine-hole public golf course, built and abandoned in the 1930s. A swimming pool and skating rink were added in 1929; but in 1964, during the Civil Rights Movement, the whites-only pool was closed to prevent it from being integrated. First a sea lion exhibit replaced the pool, then a rose garden; finally in 1988, tennis courts replaced both garden and skating rink.

In 1930, the Greenville Garden Club began to renovate a Civil-War era rock quarry into the Rock Quarry Garden. The garden won a Better Homes and Gardens award in 1932; but by the 1960s, it was neglected and overgrown. Another renovation project revitalized the garden in the 1980s, and in the 21st century, the Rock Quarry Garden became a popular wedding and reception venue.

In the 21st century, the park, now adjacent to the Greenville Zoo, included a softball field, volleyball and tennis courts, several playgrounds, a Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and eight picnic shelters. The Swamp Rabbit Trail runs through the park, and it also includes the Fernwood Nature Trail, the Ramona Graham Fitness Trail, and the Troop 19 Trail. A distinctive landmark is the memorial to Rudolf Anderson, a Greenville native shot down over Cuba in October 1962, the only American casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Anderson memorial features an F-86 Sabre and panels explaining Anderson's life and mission.^[6]

Park in Greenville, South Carolina. Falls Park on the Reedy is a 32-acre park adjacent to downtown Greenville, South Carolina in the historic West End district. Considered the birthplace of Greenville, the park was founded in 1967 when the Carolina Foothills Garden Club reclaimed 26 acres of land that had been previously used by textile mills. Renovation accelerated in the late 1990s under Mayor Knox H. White, prompting the formation of the Falls Park Endowment, a private charity supporting ongoing development. Each summer the park is home to the Upstate Shakespeare Festival.

The park's most striking feature is a unique pedestrian bridge that curves around a waterfall on the Reedy River. Named the Liberty Bridge at Falls Park on the Reedy, the 355-foot (108 m) long suspension bridge is supported by cables on only one side, giving an unobstructed view of the falls. It was designed by Boston firm Rosales + Partners with German firm Schlaich Bergermann & Partner as structural engineers and completed in the fall of 2004. It was awarded the Arthur G. Hayden medal for innovative design in 2005.

Near the bridge, the Main Street entrance to the park is graced by Bryan Hunt's 16 ft (4.9 m). bronze sculpture Fall Lake Falls and contains a restaurant and other visitor amenities at the new Falls Park Center.

The park also features a collection of public gardens and a wall from the original 1776 grist mill built on the site.^[7]

Museum in Greenville, South Carolina. The Upcountry History Museum is a history museum in Greenville, South Carolina that displays the regional history of fifteen upstate South Carolina counties from the early 18th century to the present. Exhibits designed by Christopher Chadbourne and Associates emphasize technology rather than artifacts "to engage the senses, ignite the imagination and transport visitors back in time."

The museum is located on Greenville's Heritage Green with The Children's Museum, the Greenville County Art Museum, the satellite Museum & Gallery of Bob Jones University, the Greenville County Main Library, and the Greenville Little Theatre. The museum opened in September 2007. It is operated by Furman University.

In 2015, the Upcountry History Museum was named a Smithsonian affiliate. Its first Smithsonian exhibit was Searching for the Seventies: The DOCUMERICA Photography Project.^[10]

The Wyche Pavilion is the two-story, open-air shell of a historic building in downtown Greenville, South Carolina, used in the 21st century as an event venue. As part of the Reedy River Industrial District, the building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on January 14, 1979.

The brick structure was built in 1904 by noted Greenville engineer and industrial architect Joseph Emory Sirrine (1872–1947) with large windows of the same size on both floors, a flat roof, and a cupola at its center. The building was intended as a paint shop for the adjacent Greenville Coach Factory, but with the coming of the automobile, the owners of the coach factory sold the business in 1911. In 1925, the building became the home of Duke's Mayonnaise, a successful enterprise created by Greenville resident Eugenia Thomas Slade Duke (1881–1968).

The building was virtually abandoned by 1958 and had fallen into disrepair before it was purchased in the 1980s by the Peace Center, a Greenville performing arts complex, which initially intended to restore the building. After financial constraints prevented the remodeling, the building was gutted, turned into an open-air pavilion, and named for Tommy Wyche (1926–2015) and his wife Harriet, leaders in the transformation of downtown Greenville. In 2019, following the development of Falls Park, the Peace Center proposed to install windows, doors, and HVAC equipment in order to transform the building into "a fully-functioning performance venue, featuring state of the art sound and lighting". Despite two design proposals, the second of which included a recommendation by city planners, Greenville's Design Review Board rejected the Peace Center plans by a vote of 3–2.^[14]

Museum in Greenville, South Carolina. The "Shoeless" Joe Jackson Museum and Library was first opened to the public on June 21, 2008. Located across from Fluor Field in Greenville, South Carolina, the five room brick house in which Shoeless Joe Jackson lived and died in contains a few of his personal belongings and over 2,000 books related to baseball.

In 2015, the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum formally petitioned Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred for Jackson's reinstatement to baseball, on grounds that Jackson had "more than served his sentence" in the 95 years since his banishment by Kenesaw Landis. Manfred denied the request after an official review. "The results of this work demonstrate to me that it is not possible now, over 95 years since those events took place and were considered by Commissioner Landis, to be certain enough of the truth to overrule Commissioner Landis' determinations," he wrote.

The museum allows members of the public to visit on Saturdays and conducts private tours during the week. While in Greenville, many visitors to the museum also visit "Shoeless" Joe Jackson's grave located in Woodlawn Memorial Park near the Bob Jones University campus. When visiting the grave, members of the public leave baseball related equipment such as baseballs, gloves, and cleats.^[16]

Cemetery in Greenville, South Carolina. Springwood Cemetery is a historic cemetery in Greenville, South Carolina, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the oldest municipal cemetery in the state and has approximately 7,700 marked, and 2,600 unmarked, graves.

The first burial in what today is Springwood Cemetery occurred in July 1812, after Elizabeth Blackburn Williams (1752–1812), the mother-in-law of prominent early Greenvillian Chancellor Waddy Thompson, expressed a desire to be buried in the family garden. Many other burials occurred in the area after Thompson sold 60 acres of his property to one Francis H. McLeod in 1817. In 1829 McLeod opened the private graveyard to the public, and in 1833, he conveyed a tract of land to the city for use as a cemetery. The city acquired additional acres during the 1870s, and the last five acres of the cemetery were purchased before 1944. Presumably the cemetery was named for a spring that was once included in, or was just beyond, its boundaries.

The 200-year-old cemetery includes "a comprehensive collection of gravemarker types," including field stones, raised masonry tombs topped with stone ledgers, Victorian monoliths, and Veterans Administration markers. Eighty unknown Confederate soldiers are buried near the entrance, presumably soldiers who died of wounds or disease after being removed to one of the two Greenville buildings used for hospitals during the Civil War.

Springwood retains its rural cemetery design elements and the 1876 landscape planning of prominent New South architect G. L. Norrman. The entrance gate, designed by local architect James Lawrence and built of Indiana limestone, was completed in 1914. Just outside the Main Street entrance, in its own pocket park, is a Confederate monument that from 1891 to 1923 stood in the middle of Main Street.

The northeast corner of the cemetery, which was used as a potter's field for African Americans and indigent whites has perhaps only a dozen remaining headstones, although the area is believed to contain hundreds of graves. In 1969 the City of Greenville extended Academy Street through this section and removed the remains of approximately 250 to 275 people.

Although burials continue, no new plots have been sold since the 1970s. The city of Greenville contributes to the maintenance of the cemetery, but there is no perpetual care fund, and the graves themselves remain private property. A "Friends of Springwood Cemetery" organization was formed in 2002 to raise awareness of cemetery needs.^[20]

Museum in Greenville, South Carolina. The Wilkins House is a historic house in Greenville, South Carolina, built in 1878 by Jacob W. Cagle for merchant and capitalist William T. Wilkins. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 19, 2016.

Wilkins, a native of Spartanburg, South Carolina, engaged in the hardware business in Charleston and New York City prior to the Civil War, though he returned to South Carolina to fight for the Confederacy. By his death in 1895, Wilkins was "a large stockholder in nearly every manufacturing enterprise in Greenville."

In 1867, Wilkins married Harriet Dawkins Cleveland (1843–1930) of Greenville, a woman wealthy in her own right; and in 1875 they settled in her hometown. On 93 acres Wilkins built a two-story brick mansion in the Italianate style, reflecting their prominence in the business and social life of the community. An 1898 publication described the house as "the finest home of any man in northern South Carolina." The elegant interior, decorated in high Victorian style, included large crystal chandeliers, bas-relief carvings, and an impressive curved staircase. A conservatory on the north side was crowded with plants and flowers. Even after the death of her husband and only son, Mrs. Wilkins (thereafter always dressed in black) continued to play the grand lady, hosting luxurious dinner parties and being driven to social appointments in an enclosed carriage.

On her death in 1930, the house passed to a nephew who leased it to a funeral home, Jones Mortuary, which made superficial modifications to the interior but (among other exterior alterations, including painting the brick white) added a 1,200-square-foot chapel—enough change to make the structure ineligible for inclusion on the National Register. The funeral home closed in 1999, and for ten years the building was used for antique and specialty shops and as a wedding venue.

When the now four-acre property was sold to a buyer who wished to demolish the house and build a nursing home and assisted living center, real estate developer Neil Wilson bought the house, intending to preserve and restore it. With assistance from the Palmetto Trust for Historic Preservation and members of the Greenville community, the necessary $720,000 to move the house was raised in 2014. The funeral home additions were demolished, and on September 6, 2014, the approximately 750-ton house was moved a few blocks from Augusta Street to Mills Avenue—probably becoming in the process the heaviest structure ever moved in South Carolina.

Although buildings that have been moved are typically ineligible for the National Register, the Wilkins house was considered eligible on the basis of its architecture ("an excellent example of a high-style Italianate residence") and because it was a rare residential construction by Jacob Cagle. In 2017 the Wilkins House earned a State Preservation Award from the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.^[25]

Wedding venue in Greenville, South Carolina. Isaqueena, also known as the Gassaway Mansion, is a historic house in Greenville, South Carolina, and the largest private residence in the Upstate. In 1982 it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The 40-room house was built between 1919 and 1924 by Walter L. Gassaway, a banker and textile mill owner; his wife, Minnie Quinn Gassaway, designed the structure after taking a correspondence course in architecture. Mrs. Gassaway used the mansion itself for entertaining, including card parties and "entertainments in the music room and ballroom", but she also supervised the 110-acre estate that included a working farm and dairy.

As the National Register nomination notes, the three-story house is "an unusual example of eclecticism", blending neo-Gothic and neoclassical elements that include six Doric columns, a Palladian window, a castellated tower, two rooftop patios, and a massive porte-cochère. Stone for the random bond masonry was in part taken from a mid-nineteenth-century grist mill on the Reedy River owned by Greenville founder Vardry McBee.

Walter Gassaway died of a heart attack on June 4, 1930. The following year his widow abandoned Isaqueena for a smaller home (which she also designed) closer to downtown Greenville. Most of the estate was sold for house lots, and the mansion was converted into rental apartments. In 1959, the building was purchased by the fledgling Greenville Art Museum, which occupied it and built an art school building on the property. After the art museum moved to a purpose-built gallery on Greenville's Heritage Green in 1974, the mansion sat vacant until purchased in 1977 for use as a church and school. The building once again became a private residence in the 1990s, and it has since been maintained through rentals as a wedding venue.^[28]