In case you’re thinking you’ve stepped through the Pearly Gates, allow me to clarify. This is just South Carolina on a random Friday afternoon.
Well okay, maybe not “just”. The story spans 225 years, give or take, and involves (in no particular order) a seltzer king, a Georgia boy with a green thumb, the Vanderbilt family, and rice.
The vestiges of South Carolina’s rice industry were all that remained by the time Dr. Issac Emerson began buying up the former plantations – in bulk. I say “in bulk” because he purchased six of them, all told. The property eventually took in about 12,000 acres.
And where might Dr. Emerson have come upon enough money in the year 1906 to launch such a grand plan? The answer is Bromo Seltzer, the handy little remedy that will cure a lot of digestive ills. Dr. Emerson invented it. Obviously, the digestive distress business paid handsomely at the turn of the 20th century – and still does.
After naming his new estate Arcadia, Dr. Emerson chose one of the old plantation houses named Prospect Hill, circa 1794, as his new home – adding two flanking wings, as well as stables, a large guest house, and several other dependencies between 1906 and 1925.
Along the way, Dr. Emerson’s daughter, Martha, married Alfred Vanderbilt, adding yet another layer of wealth into the mix.
And then came Neal Cox. If the story of Arcadia began with Issac Emerson, it’s fair to say that Neal Cox wrote his own share of the chapters with a genius for landscape design and gardening – chapters which are best viewed in person on a lovely Low Country afternoon.
Having enjoyed a lot of formal gardens in my travels, I will confess that I wandered around Arcadia continually having to remind myself not to let my astonished jaw drag the ground. More than once I found myself asking, almost out loud, “Who ARE these people?”
The stretch of front lawn alone, which runs down to the Waccamaw River, almost disappeared over the far horizon. Bordered by blooming azaleas and live oaks, carpeted in the greenest grass whose every blade knew better than to misbehave, and punctuated here or there by pristine flower beds, wide steps and broad walkways, it truly did look like something out of a dream.
And yet, it was designed and run for many years by a small-town boy from Lincolnton, Georgia who simply had a nice green thumb. While Dr. Emerson’s grandson, George Vanderbilt, was technically the boss of Arcadia, everyone on staff knew Neal as the man who made everything tick.
It’s still ticking today, with Neal Cox keeping a watchful eye from on high. His ashes reside in a lovely garden area just off to one side of that broad lawn. If the description of Heaven is true, and I believe that it is, then these days I’m sure Mr. Cox is enjoying a fine view, but if you ask me, he came pretty close with the one he left here in South Carolina.
