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Established in Aiken in 1951, this architectural firm consisted of principals William Edwin Hallman and John Wesley Weems, Jr., and it played a prominent role in the design of institutional buildings throughout South Carolina. Known alternatively as Hallman, Weems, and Dukes in the mid-1950s and Hallman, Weems, and Associates in the mid-1960s, the firm was one of the most prolific during the mid-twentieth century in western and upstate South Carolina. Among the many buildings credited to Hallman and Weems—in addition to the Batesburg (1961) and Johnston (1962) armories—are Barnett Hall, Smith Hall, Lever Hall, Mauldin Hall, the Schilletter Dining Hall, the Redfern Health Center, and Byrnes Hall, all at Clemson University; Pinecrest Elementary School at Aiken; the 1956 City Hall and Fire Station complex in North Augusta, GA; Millbrook Junior High School in Aiken; St. John’s Methodist Church in Aiken; Ridge Hill High School in Ridge Springs; Strom Thurmond High School in Edgefield; Aiken High School, for which the firm won a special merit award in 1957; and the 1968 sanctuary of the First Presbyterian Church in Aiken.
William Edwin Hallman, Sr., was born February 6, 1920, in Windsor, South Carolina. A 1941 Clemson graduate with a degree in Architecture, Hallman served in the US Army from 1941 to 1946, seeing action with the 100th Infantry Division in France, the Rhineland, and Central Europe in 1944 and 1945. He worked for the firm of Kuhlke and Wade from 1946 to 1951, then established his partnership with Weems. Hallman retired from practice in 1981 and died on March 8, 2006.
John Wesley Weems, Jr., was born in Meridian, Mississippi, on July 23, 1916. He completed a Bachelor of Arts at Mississippi College in 1937 and a BFA in Landscape Architecture at the University of Georgia in 1939 before serving in the US Army Air Force from 1940 to 1946. Upon his return, he earned Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Architecture degrees at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1949. During his work as a draftsman at Kuhlke and Wade (1949-51), Weems met Hallman, and the two went into practice together. Weems was elected President of the South Carolina Chapter of the AIA in 1963. He died on October 21, 2003.