Frank M. Anderson's Writing

Tag: Greenville history

  • How Grief, Greenville, and a Search for Meaning Slowly Turned Into a Civic Philosophy Project

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    My brother died in 2023. Around the same time, I was already dealing with cancer, mental health struggles, questions about survival, and the growing realization that the life I thought I understood no longer entirely made sense to me. So I started writing. At first, that writing became The Cancer Diet, a memoir about illness,…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: What Kind of City Are We Becoming?

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: What Kind of City Are We Becoming?

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    Over the past few weeks, this project has honestly felt a little chaotic at times. I’ve produced a flood of material:-history posts,-city planning discussions,-maps,-timelines,-personal memories,-civic frustrations,-philosophical essays,-local observations,-and probably far too many long-form posts for the average Facebook scroll session. At times, I imagine it has looked less like a coherent project and more like…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: The Map Beneath the Map

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: The Map Beneath the Map

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    Welcome to The Map Beneath the Map- a historical branch of Seen / Unseen Greenville exploring the older layers underneath modern Greenville When most people think about Greenville, they think about the version they can immediately see. Falls Park. Main Street. The bridge. The restaurants. The polished downtown that shows up in tourism campaigns and…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: Reading the Budget Like a Map

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: Reading the Budget Like a Map

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    How a city reveals itself through money, priorities, and infrastructure. I’ll admit something upfront: I did not sit down and fully read Greenville’s entire proposed FY2027 budget. What actually caught my attention was a Facebook post from the City of Greenville summarizing some of the major priorities: transportation improvements, trails and greenways, affordable housing initiatives,…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: A Timeline of the City Beneath the City

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: A Timeline of the City Beneath the City

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    What came before—and what never fully left Greenville can feel like a new city. A growing city.A successful city.A city figuring itself out in real time. But that version of Greenville—the one most of us experience day to day—is only the latest layer. What makes Greenville interesting isn’t just what it is now. It’s how…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: The Hidden Origins of Segregation

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: The Hidden Origins of Segregation

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    What It Looked Like Up Close Growing up, I lived in the Augusta Road area near the Cleveland Street YMCA. Just a few blocks away was Nicholtown—what people would have called “the Black side of town.” It wasn’t far. Close enough to walk. Close enough that people moved through both areas every day. But it…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: A City Divided

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: A City Divided

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    There are parts of Greenville that feel like they’ve always belonged together. Downtown.The parks.The places people point to when they talk about how far the city has come. And then there are the other parts. The neighborhoods you don’t end up in by accident.The streets that don’t connect the way you expect them to.The invisible…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: When Everything Started Pointing Downtown

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: When Everything Started Pointing Downtown

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    This weekend, downtown Greenville is overflowing for Artisphere. And honestly, that is a good thing. Twenty or thirty years ago, the idea that Greenville would host a nationally respected arts festival drawing huge crowds into downtown would have sounded almost absurd to a lot of locals. The city built something real here. People genuinely want…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: Whatever Happened to the Clock Restaurants?

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: Whatever Happened to the Clock Restaurants?

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    If you grew up in Greenville, chances are you have a Clock story. I do too. But before I even think about The Clock or Pete’s, I think about Como’s Pete’s. As a kid, that place felt permanent. I can still see it clearly — sitting in the booth, staring at the menu longer than…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: Unity Park, Social Justice, and the Tower to Nowhere

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: Unity Park, Social Justice, and the Tower to Nowhere

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    There is a lot to admire about Unity Park. It is beautiful, spacious, and full of life. It transformed long-overlooked land near the Reedy River into one of Greenville’s most impressive public spaces. Families gather there, kids play there, people walk and rest there, and for many residents it has become a genuine source of…

  • Four Greenvilles

    Four Greenvilles

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    When people talk about Greenville, they usually talk about it like it is one place with one shared experience. A single city moving in one direction with one story to tell. But that has never really been true. Greenville is several Greenvilles at once. Different versions of the same city, living beside each other, shaping…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: Cherokee Ground Beneath Greenville

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: Cherokee Ground Beneath Greenville

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    Greenville is a city that likes to talk about what comes next. We talk about growth, new restaurants, bike trails, development, rankings, housing prices, and whether traffic has finally become unbearable. We talk about what Greenville is becoming. That makes sense. Growing places often become a little obsessed with the future. But places are not…

  • Seen / Unseen Greenville: Polished Surface, Divided Ground

    Seen / Unseen Greenville: Polished Surface, Divided Ground

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    Welcome Back to Seen / Unseen Greenville This blog will still go wherever life takes it—family, politics, recovery, culture, memory, and whatever else feels worth talking about. But I wanted to mark a direction I’m especially excited about. Seen / Unseen Greenville will be an ongoing series where I take a closer look at this…

  • Seen/Unseen Greenville: This Place Has Never Been One Thing

    Seen/Unseen Greenville: This Place Has Never Been One Thing

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    Welcome to Seen / Unseen Greenville This blog will still have all kinds of posts. Politics, family, recovery, culture, whatever life puts in front of me. That part isn’t changing. But I wanted to mark a new direction I’m excited about. I’ve lived in Greenville most of my life, and like a lot of people,…