3210 York Street – Hill’s Store in Sharon, S.C.

City Directories and History:  In 1913, William Lawrence Hill started operation of a general merchandise enterprise in Sharon called Hill and Company. The Hill House on Sharon Road on the northern edge of Sharon was built in 1924 by W. H. Peeps of Charlotte, NC for William Lawrence Hill. Leigh Colyer, also of Charlotte, was the landscape architect.

The Colonial Revival side gable house is notable for its many features: a full-facade patio, rear two-story extension with a hipped roof, hipped dormers with casement windows, and one-story windows with flat arches and concrete corner blocks. Exposed rafter beams and medallions are some of the decorative architectural elements found in this house. [Historical Properties of York County, SC – 1995]

York was the political and economic seat of power in York County for decades until post Civil War development in Rock Hill skyrocketed the small community into dominating York County’s education and urban success.  This postal map from ca. 1896 shows exactly how rural most of York County remained at the turn of the 20th century.  Courtesy of the Un. of N.C.

Note the 1910 Walker map is to early to show the location of the Hill’s family home but it is close to the siting of Helton, the early potter who worked in Sharon, SC for many years. Mr. Hill in the 1910 census had been operating his general store for many successful years and was married to Mary, age 24 years. His model for the store was taken from Arnold Friedheim’s highly successful store in downtown Rock Hill, they are nearly identical.

The Hill Complex Historic District includes an important collection of commercial, industrial, and residential buildings which represent the development of a business complex in the town of Sharon by William Lawrence Hill. The district is an attempt to more fully interpret the broad context of the development of Hill’s business interests by including other commercial buildings and his home, which are all in close proximity to the W.L. Hill Store, individually listed in the National Register in 1995. Four contributing properties and one noncontributing property comprise the district. During the last decade of the nineteenth century and for the first half of the twentieth century, Hill developed a number of interconnected businesses which served western York County. He developed a business that included land ownership, cotton farming and ginning operations, banking, and retailing. The W.L. Hill Store, built in 1913, was constructed on a grand scale and is still by far the largest building in the town of Sharon. About 1920 he erected a cotton warehouse adjacent to the store and a warehouse across the street which had access to the rail line. Hill also had a cotton gin within the complex. The present gin was built ca. 1925 to replace an earlier gin which was destroyed by fire. The Hill home was built ca. 1890, shortly after he went into the mercantile business. Listed in the National Register April 18, 2003. [Courtesy of the S.C. Dept. of Archives and History]

Informative links: Colonial Revival House

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