| South Carolina Department of Archives and History |
| National Register Properties in South Carolina Guignard Brick Works, Lexington County (100 Granby Crossing at Knox Abbott Drive, Cayce) |
The Guignard Brick Works is significant as an example of an early-twentieth century industrial complex, one which produced bricks for many buildings constructed in Columbia and throughout South Carolina from ca. 1900 through the mid-twentieth century, and for its association with the Guignard family, prominent in local business and civic affairs throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Guignard Brick Works complex includes four brick beehive kilns, a historic brick office, and remnants of other industrial features of the brick works, and has archaeological potential. Three of the four kilns were built ca. 1919, while the fourth was built in 1932 to replace a ca. 1900 kiln which burned beyond repair. These beehive kilns, also called circular downdraft kilns, are constructed of brick, topped with brick domes, and measure approximately 18’ high and 35’ in diameter. A one-story hip roof brick office building, ca. 1900, stands west of the kilns. The Guignard Brick Works flourished and expanded its operations with the building boom in Columbia which began in the late 1890s and was in full swing by 1900. The evolution of the brick works over more than one hundred years of operation at this site, in a process in which the fuels and methods for firing brick changed from wood to coal to gas, may be further illustrated by examination and interpretation of the standing structures and extant above ground features. Archaeological investigation and interpretation of the remains of additional buildings and structures—primarily from the period ca. 1886-ca. 1974, during the commercial operation of the Guignard Brick Works on this site—is likely to yield significant information about the process of brick making at this complex. Listed in the National Register February 13, 1995.
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