City Directories and History: The A.M. McNair House is significant as an excellent example of Queen Anne-influenced residential architecture and for its association with A.M. McNair (1857-1929), prominent Hartsville businessman who served as co-owner of McKinnon and McNair Department Store, founder and president of the Pee Dee Furniture Company, and vice president of the Bank of Hartsville. The house was built ca. 1900 for Alexander Mortimer McNair. The two-story residence on a brick foundation has an asymmetrical plan, with a three-bay façade, a pyramidal roof with cross gables on all elevations and interior corbel-capped chimneys, and a one-story hip roof porch which wraps around the east and west elevation and is supported by turned posts with a simple balustrade. A pent roof or wood awning with scalloped edge extends the shelter of this porch. The central feature of the façade is a pedimented gable extension of the porch roof which contains an applied sunburst design. The west elevation includes a two-story gabled bay extension where the wraparound porch terminates and the first story of which is canted and adorned with brackets and dropped pendant. A one-story gabled extension with shed addition is at the rear. Listed in the National Register September 8, 1994.
Additional information: The house was built ca. 1900 for Alexander Mortimer McNair, a native North Carolinian who had first moved to South Carolina in 1877, when he settled at Clyde, a Darlington County community west of Hartsville. After working at a general store and in the turpentine industry for a few years, including a brief return to North Carolina, McNair purchased this lot in 1899 and moved into this house in 1902. He soon went into business with his brother-in-law M.S. McKinnon (1872-1938) to found McKinnon and McNair, a Hartsville department store which operated for many years as competition for J.L. Coker and Company. McNair and McKinnon also founded the Pee Dee Furniture Company in 1905, with McNair serving as the company’s president for many years. Banking was another of McNair’s other business interests; after the Bank of Hartsville was founded in 1904, McNair served briefly as its president and for many years as a vice-president, and also served as a director of the Peoples’ Bank of Hartsville. “In the passing of A.M. McNair, an editorial in the Hartsville Messenger observed after McNair’s death in 1929, “Hartsville loses a pioneer builder. … he labored steadfastly in the upbuilding of the community and in the welfare of its people. . . . Few man have commanded such confidence and respect of his fellowmen. In 1908 McNair sold the house to Craven C. Best (1861-1926), Hartsville farmer and businessman; the property passed to Best’s children at his death and was later sold out of the family.
(Courtesy of South Carolina Department of Archives and History)
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