From Sherman’s March to civil rights protests and sit-ins in the 1960s, Columbia is a historical hub. One piece of the city’s history that might not be as familiar is that it was briefly home to a president.
The Woodrow Wilson Family Home is the only remaining presidential site in South Carolina. The home was first opened to the public in the 1930s as a shrine to Woodrow Wilson, but after closing in 2005 for a nine-year renovation, the museum reopened with a new focus on the Reconstruction Era in 2014.
Since then, the home has served as the Museum of the Reconstruction Era, one of the country’s only museums dedicated to this time period. The University of South Carolina played a role in the site's reimagining as a lens for Reconstruction. John Sherrer, director of preservation at Historic Columbia, said the idea was largely influenced by a university faculty member.
"The interpretive format was determined through partnerships that Historic Columbia forged," Sherrer said. "Particularly with University of South Carolina professor Tom Brown, who was really one of the primary intellectual driving forces behind research and conceptualizing this as a way of looking at the historic site, ... local history and certainly the Wilson family."
Private nonprofit group Historic Columbia operates the Woodrow Wilson Family Home, in addition to other historic houses in Columbia. The organization says it aims to educate the public about Columbia's history through preservation.
The staff considers the museum to be a 21st-century museum due to its lack of traditional artifacts. Instead, the museum consists mainly of panels, interactive features and videos. Sherrer said he appreciates the interactive nature of the museum.
"For me and for a lot of folks, while I can certainly learn history from a textbook, I like the immersive experience," Sherrer said. "I like to be able to go and see things in a variety of contexts. I like three-dimensionality. I like artifacts. I like historic photographs that aren't necessarily on the page."
Heather Bacon-Rogers, Historic Columbia’s visitor experience manager, also said she likes the museum's nontraditional format. All the artifacts that the museum houses relate directly to Woodrow Wilson or his mother’s family.
President Thomas "Tommy" Woodrow Wilson lived at the Columbia home when he was a teenager. Bacon-Rogers said the museum focuses on what Wilson's life may have looked like during the time period of Reconstruction.
“Even though we are talking about Reconstruction, we’re using the Wilsons because it was their home,” Bacon-Rogers said. “We use them as the lens to look at Reconstruction to give it more of a local idea.”
A plaque about Black families during the Reconstruction Era is pictured inside the the Museum of the Reconstruction Era at the Woodrow Wilson Family Home at 1705 Hampton St. on March 25, 2026. After the Civil War, many families that had previously been separated during slavery attempted to reunite.
One of the goals of the museum is to dispel the popular misconceptions people currently have about the Reconstruction Era. Bacon-Rogers said she encourages people to visit the museum in order to refine the things they have been previously taught about this time period that may not be true.
“There is a whole generation of people who didn’t learn about Reconstruction,” Bacon-Rogers said. “They learned what’s called ‘The Lost Cause,’ and it’s sort of this idea that Reconstruction was a failure, … but there is this huge first attempt at the Civil Rights Movement really through that time period.”
Historic Columbia’s group tour coordinator Adam Miller said he invites students to the museum for a different reason: the scarcity of museums dedicated to this part of history.
“You do have a lot of museums dedicated to the Civil War but not really too many after. What is the aftermath?" Miller said. "How do people rebuild here in the South and all across the United States?”
One aspect of the museum that Bacon-Rogers said she particularly enjoys is that the tours are semi-guided. She said this format allows for visitors to focus on the topics that are specifically interesting to them.
“We sort of introduce the spaces and talk about them, but then people have the opportunity to read and get out of it whatever they want to,” Bacon-Rogers said.
Miller said he urges the public to understand how learning about the past is necessary in order to understand the present.
“Learning from different ideas or what occurred helps us advance as people, and really studying that time period can be helpful to the time period we are in,” Miller said.
In addition to the home, the site also features a garden that consists of South Carolina native plants that are also time-period accurate. Although the garden is not part of the tour, visitors have the opportunity to check it out before or after their tour. The garden also consists of panels explaining how the Wilsons would have used the garden during that time.
The Museum of the Reconstruction Era is located at 1705 Hampton St. Tours are available Wednesday through Sunday starting at 1:30 p.m. The museum’s garden is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday. On Sunday, the garden opens at 1 p.m. and closes at 4 p.m. Tour tickets are available for purchase on Historic Columbia’s website.
On the third Sunday of each month, one of the historic homes owned by Historic Columbia offers free tours to residents of Richland and Lexington County. The Museum of the Reconstruction Era’s next Free Sunday will be on June 21.