History of Colcock Hall
The Hervey Allen Oak
In 1919, poet and novelist Hervey Allen came to Charleston to teach English at Porter Military Academy. Allen’s best-known poem, “The Blindman,” was widely read and hailed as the birth of the "lost generation" of the 1920s. His novel Anthony Adverse was one of the biggest selling novels of the 1930s and was later made into the Warner Brothers film of the same name, starring Olivia de Havilland and Fredric March. His time in Charleston coincided with the city’s Literary Renaissance. Allen befriended Charleston writers such as DuBose Heyward, John Bennett and Laura Bragg and in 1919 he helped found the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Allen’s poem about the Porter Oak appeared in the first school annual. That same oak survives at the southwest corner of Colcock Hall.
The Old Oak Tree
I am the oldest and noblest thing at Porter.
Before the school I was.
Then a furnace light beat upon the walls
Then a silence fell upon the land,
Sorrow and desolation filled the land.
At last a man came with the love of Christ in this heart,
Under my branches now sounds the murmur of young voices
Before you go, look at me!