Shand, Gadsden Edwards
Shand became known for his public and commercial building designs and played a significant role in the development of the textile industry in South Carolina during the early twentieth century.
Architect, engineer. Shand was born in Columbia on March 21, 1868, the son of Robert Shand and Louisa Edwards. He received a B.S. in civil engineering from South Carolina College in 1888 and also studied architecture at Columbia College in New York. He and Patience Griffin Bonham had five children.
Shand became known for his public and commercial building designs and played a significant role in the development of the textile industry in South Carolina during the early twentieth century. He served as superintendent of construction of the South Carolina State House from 1888 to 1890, under the direction of the architect Frank Niernsee, and established an independent engineering practice in Columbia in 1891. The Canal Dime Savings Bank (1893), a Romanesque-revival building on Main Street, was among his early architectural work. In 1895 Shand joined the firm of W. B. Smith Whaley & Company, which built textile mills across the state, including such major complexes as Olympia, Granby, and Richland mills in Columbia. Shand and George E. Lafaye provided most of the firm’s architectural services. When Whaley left Columbia in 1903, Shand and Lafaye established their own architectural and engineering practice. Their most important works included the Clarendon County Courthouse in Manning (1908), the Ottaray Hotel in Greenville (1907–1908), the rebuilding of the Columbia College campus in Columbia (1909), and the seven-story Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills Warehouse in Atlanta, Georgia (1909). Shand also drew the original plans for Shandon, the fashionable suburb in Columbia developed by his father and other investors in the Columbia Land and Investment Company.
Shand ended his partnership with Lafaye in 1912 to focus solely on his engineering company, which worked mainly on industrial and engineering projects. The firm was also a major supplier of structural steel and ornamental iron for building projects throughout the state in the 1920s. In 1933 he went to work for the South Carolina Public Service Commission, first as the director of the agency and later as a valuation engineer. His son, Gadsden E. Shand, Jr., continued to manage the Shand Engineering Company. Shand died in Columbia on April 17, 1948, and was buried in the Trinity Episcopal Churchyard.
Moore, John Hammond. Columbia and Richland County: A South Carolina Community, 1740–1990. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993.
Power, J. Tracy. “‘The Brightest of the Lot’: W. B. Smith Whaley and the Rise of the South Carolina Textile Industry, 1893–1903.” South Carolina Historical Magazine 93 (April 1992): 126–38.
Wells, John E., and Robert E. Dalton. The South Carolina Architects, 1885–1935: A Biographical Directory. Richmond, Va.: New South Architectural Press, 1992.
