Two markers will be unveiled at 2 p.m. March 6 at the Public Safety building in North Augusta.
The building is on the site of the former Palmetto Lodge and a caretaker’s cottage that once served as the home of an award -winning poet and editor of “The Saturday Evening Post”.
Local historian Milledge Murray said he was excited for the dedication of a state marker in honor of Palmetto Lodge later known as Seven Gables while a separate marker will include photographs of Starkey Flythe Jr., who lived in the caretaker’s cottage on the adjacent property.
Built in 1903, the Palmetto Lodge was built as a hunting lodge on the property of James U. Jackson’s Hampton Terrace Hotel and welcomed guests including John D. Rockefeller, President William H. Taft and author Edison Marshall (Flythe’s uncle) reportedly wrote his novel “The Vikings” while staying there.
It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
Hampton Terrace was destroyed by fire in 1916. Later it was known as the Seven Gables. The building met the same fate as Hampton Terrace in September 2008 when it was engulfed in flames.
Flythe lived in the carriage house on the site. He died September 2013.
Flythe’s stories were anthologized in “Best American Short Stories,” “New Stories from the South” and the “O. Henry Prize” volumes.
He won the PEN/Syndicated Fiction Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in prose, and a South Carolina Arts Association literature Fellowship. He was the managing editor of the Curtis Publishing Company magazines, Holiday, and The Saturday Evening Post.
According to Flythe’s obituary, he accompanied President Richard Nixon on a trip to the Middle East in 1975 and interviewed many celebrities including Lady Bird Johnson, Johnny Cash, Cher, James Brown, The Beach Boys and John Denver.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for more than 35 years. She’s won multiple Georgia Press Association awards, is the recipient of the 2018 Greater Augusta Arts Council’s media award and was named Augusta Magazine’s best local writer in 2024 and 2025. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
