Construction Underway on New Music Wing
Follow construction progress.
Construction is underway on the Marion and Wayland H. Cato Jr. Center for the Arts. The new state-of-the art facility will be located next to the current Simons Center for the Arts building on St. Philip Street.
Scheduled to be completed in 2008, the 68,000 square foot building will add rehearsal spaces, classrooms, a dance studio, a new gallery, offices, and practice rooms to the School of the Arts' facilities. The $18.1 million project will include 16, 038 square feet of music space.There will be seventeen offices for the Music faculty and staff, sixteen practice rooms, and two ensemble rooms. There also will be a large practice/performance space that faces onto Calhoun Street.
The Albert Simons Center for the Arts was built in the late 1970s when fewer than 800 College of Charleston students per semester enrolled in what then was called the Department of Fine Arts. While courses were offered in studio art, art history, music, theatre, and dance, the disciplines of photography, jazz music, arts management, and historic preservation were not yet part of the curriculum. Today, more than 4,800 students enroll in the School of the Arts’ courses per semester. Nearly 600 of these students are majors within the School. Arts Management and Historic Preservation & Community Planning now exist as separate programs; photography is a thriving component of the Studio Art Department, as is Jazz within the Music Department.
The new wing is named for Wayland Henry Cato, Jr. and his wife, Marion Rivers Cato. Their gift of $1.5 million is the largest single gift ever given to the College of Charleston School of the Arts. Former College of Charleston President Lee Higdon said, "For many years, Wayland and Marion have contributed significantly to the education and development of South Carolina’s students. Their efforts on behalf of the College of Charleston alone have impacted our state in ways we could not have anticipated, and many of the recipients of their generosity have become outstanding public servants themselves.”
Wayland Henry Cato, Jr. is a distinguished business leader, family man and philanthropist whose generous support of higher education, here at the College of Charleston and elsewhere in the Carolinas, has enhanced educational opportunities for hundreds of students. He is the Chairman Emeritus of The Cato Corporation, a chain of women’s apparel stores. Since 1997 he has been a member of the Board of Directors of the College of Charleston Foundation. Both personally and corporately, he has generously endowed scholarship programs at the College of Charleston.
Marion Rivers Cato is a talented author, dedicated community volunteer and devoted citizen of Charleston. In 1991 Marion Rivers Ravenel published Marie Ravenel: From Childhood to China, an account of a medical missionary in revolutionary China in the 1920s. She authored a biography of her father, Rivers Delivers: The Story of L. Mendel Rivers, which was published in 1995. Marion Rivers Cato is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Historic Charleston Foundation and South Carolina Educational Television, and a member of the Board of Visitors of Converse College.