What to See in Newberry - Top Sights and Attractions

Garden in Newberry, South Carolina. Wells Japanese Garden is a small Japanese garden located at 1608 Lindsay Street in Newberry, South Carolina. It is open daily.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

The garden was created by W. Fulmer Wells in 1930, donated to the city in 1971, and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. It is currently being restored and maintained by the Newberry Council of Garden Clubs.

The garden contains two ponds, concrete bridges in a Japanese style, torii, a teahouse, and a variety of indigenous and exotic flora including lotus, Japanese iris, water lilies, crepe myrtle, dogwood, and cypress.

On February 12, 2012 at 12:12 the City of Newberry met with Senior Curator of The Presidential Service Museum, Martin CJ Mongiello, to accept a gift of a Matsu (pine) tree. Mongiello lived in Japan for many years and remembered visiting where President George H. W. Bush and Ulysses S. Grant each planted a Pine tree at the Tokyo famed Zojoji Temple. City officials at the meeting were Matt DeWitt and Jeff Shacker. Doctor Jerry Livingston, a local resident and former missionary in Japan of 40 years visited at 2:12 on the 12th to be introduced to the garden for the first time.

Komatsu Corporation donated a sizeable fund to help with additions at the garden in 2012. Both Doctor Livingston and Mongiello have pledged to assist in the garden for 2012.^[1]

Building in Newberry, South Carolina. The Newberry Opera House, located in Newberry, South Carolina, is a fully restored historic building that is a live-performance space for popular artists, touring theatre companies, and local organizations. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.

Designed in the French Gothic style, the first floor of the building was used by the town government for offices, a jail, and the fire company, which had one engine there. The upper floor was designed as a theater and supporting spaces. For years it attracted national touring companies, individual performers and a variety of theatre acts. It later was adapted also for use as a movie theater, but showed its last movie in 1952. It was restored beginning in 1998, in a project that included an addition to enable its use for full theatrical productions.^[4]

The Burton House is a historic plantation-style house in Newberry, South Carolina, United States. Constructed shortly before the Civil War, it features a range of architectural details in classical architectural style. Although it changed owners in its early years, it was owned by members of the namesake Burton family for approximately a century, and it has been named a historic site.

Although located in the city of Newberry, the house is built in the style of plantation houses in the countryside: it features Neoclassical components, although in a diminished and vernacular mode. The house is a two-story rectangle with a central portico dominating the facade. Square wooden pillars support each story of the portico, while pilasters in a similar style are placed at the portico's junctions with the main body of the house. As a second-story door provides access to the second story of the portico, the space between pillars and pilasters is filled with an unadorned balustrade. Multi-pane transom lights are placed above both the main entrance and the second-story door to the portico, in addition to sidelights around the main entrance. Topping the house is a gabled roof, which culminates in a pediment atop the portico. The entire house is a wooden building comprising nearly 5,000 square feet (460 m2), although only about 4,000 square feet (370 m2) are finished. Three fireplaces are located throughout the building, which is underlain by a crawlspace.

Although the precise date of construction for the Burton House is unknown, it was constructed circa 1857. From 1856 until 1858, the property was owned by one of Newberry's first men, William Walter Houseal, a merchant who was elected to hold local office. Thirty years after Houseal sold the property, it was bought by James A. Burton, who was active in the sale of insurance; a 1921 city directory records him as selling both real estate and fire insurance from an office on Caldwell Street, while still living in the house on Glenn Street. Burton's descendants owned the property into the 1980s, although it has since passed out of the family.

In November 1980, the Burton House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, qualifying because of its historically significant architecture; it was part of a group of Newberry locations added to the Register together as part of a multiple property submission. It is one of twenty-four individual properties and historic districts listed on the National Register in the city of Newberry and the surrounding area.^[9]