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Not long after Furman College moved to Greenville, the Baptist Convention voted to establish a female college under the same board of trustees. Classes began at Greenville Female College on a limited scale in 1855. The first full session was in 1856. The construction of the college’s main building was begun in 1858, with the additional wings added later. In 1914, the name of the institution was altered to Greenville Woman’s College. It was supposedly Eudora Ramsay, the feminist daughter of the college president, who convinced her father to drop the offensive word “female.”
The Ramsay Fine Arts Building was completed in 1922 and named in honor of David M. Ramsay who served as president of GWC from 1911 to 1933. The architects were the local firm of Beacham and LeGrand. The building, with its 1200-seat auditorium, served both campuses and was located where the Greenville Little Theatre was later built. During the Great Depression, matters of finance dictated that GWC become the Woman’s College of Furman University. The process of union began in 1933.
[From “Remembering Greenville: Photographs from the Coxe Collection,” by Jeffrey R. Willis.]In 1926 the Little Theatre came to Greenville in the form of the Greenville Artists’ Guild. Seventy-five devoted men and women worked together in an effort to “develop the art, culture and drama which for so long has lain dormant among Greenville folks.” Two years later, the group had grown to over 100 and was renamed the Community Little Theatre, and later the Greenville Little Theatre. It presented one- to four-act plays in any available auditorium boasting a stage. After World War II the Air Force Glider Base movie theatre on Lowndes Hill Road was purchased and served the group for the next two decades. With insufficient storage space, more artistic productions featuring larger casts and steady increases in memberships, the need for expansion of facilities became imperative. The current Greenville Little Theatre was built on the site of the Ramsay Fine Arts building and held its first production in the new building on April 11, 1967.
