Upcountry History Museum

Greenville’s Upcountry History Museum turned to McMillan Pazdan Smith to design a new 43,000 SF museum that showcases the Upcountry’s unique cultural, social, and economic history through stories that layer artifacts, manual and interactive manipulatives, touch-screen interactive technologies, oral histories, and motion activated elements within a series of immersive environments. The design anchors the City’s downtown cultural campus, Heritage Green, and is neighbor to three other museums, a library, and community theater. The building is reminiscent of 19th century mill structures, and its tower is carefully derived from a thorough study of the scale and materiality of surrounding historic mills. Inside, the museum houses 9,000 SF of gallery for its permanent exhibition, a 2,000 SF gallery for traveling exhibitions, a children’s activity learning center, visitor-orientation space, a 60-seat media theater, and a retail shop. The facility also contains an archive and research library with space for special collection and archival storage.