Winnsboro, SC (WLTX) - Large concrete structures behind Sion Presbyterian Church in Winnsboro have fascinated visitors and residents for about eight decades.
"Why are they there? Are they someone's garden sculpture?" said Pelham Lyles. Those are just a few of the questions she has gotten about the structures behind the Winnsboro church.
Lyles is the director of the Fairfield County Museum. She said growing up they called them mushrooms because they looked like toadstools.
Lyles said the 1930s architecture were prototypes for gas stations by architect James Minor Workman.
She said, "He (Workman) knew that automobiles would be the thing of the future. And you have to stop and get gas."
According to Lyles, "This would be the office (pointing to the center of the structure) where the proprietor would stand in. The gas nozzles came from holes in the ceiling, they would pull it down. It was like The Jetsons in a day and time when there wasn't even any TVs."
Workman got investors involved with the idea, but the economy ending up killing the concept. Workman wrote a letter to Frank Lloyd Wright about his construction.
Lyles said, "I think Mr. Workman had actually flown out to the city wherever he thought Mr. Wright would be available, but he got shut down."
Later Wright used a very similar design at the Johnson Wax Headquarters building in Wisconsin, Lyles does not believe it was a coincidence.
She said, "Wright never, never got back with Minor Workman and unfortunately he never made it as a very successful designer."
Even though Workman's efforts are somewhat obscure, Lyles believes it still important to remember his work.
She said, "We have our own unique design, our own unique histories. Every community needs to study their histories, it's the story of mankind."