Mann-Simons Cottage

Mann-Simons Cottage

Mann-Simons Cottage is a historic home located at Columbia, South Carolina. It was built around 1850, and is a 1 1/2-story, cottage style frame house on a raised basement.

As the antebellum home of a substantial free black Columbia family, it is the prototype survivor of a cluster of houses belonging to a significant group in Columbia’s population before the Civil War.

The cottage is a reminder that, during the antebellum period, free blacks lived and associated with the white community a great deal more than has heretofore been realized.

Celia Mann, the earliest known owner of the house, was instrumental in establishing an early, post-Civil War, black church in the city. The First Calvary Baptist Church was organized in the Simons Cottage, with religious services held in the basement.

Her daughter, Agnes Jackson, married Bill Simons, a free black musician who played with the local Joe Randal Band. The home is a one-and-one-half story cottage style house with a raised basement and a gabled roof with two corbel-capped chimneys.

The façade has a porch that is supported by four brick posts. The porch roof is supported by four Tuscan columns and is enclosed by a balustradeum home of a substantial free black Columbia family.

The house now serves as a museum, with tours offered six days a week.

Mann-Simons Cottage was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 23, 1973.