Family home of Darla Moore, USC mega-donor, catches fire Saturday
The Lake City home of University of South Carolina mega-donor Darla Moore caught fire Saturday, an official confirmed.
The fire was reported at around noon Saturday and has been extinguished. Nobody was injured in the fire, said Maj. Mike Nunn of the Florence County Sheriff’s Office.
The extent of the damage to the house is unclear, Nunn said. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
Moore’s Lake City family home was built in 1918 and is a 6,200-square-foot, single-story building, property records show. Six generations of the Moore family have lived on the property where the house was built, according to the New York Times.
Recent weeks have been difficult for Moore, whose mother Lorraine Moore, 89, died April 1, The State previously reported.
In Columbia and among Gamecocks, Moore is best known for donating upwards of $70 million to USC. The university’s well-respected Darla Moore School of Business bears its major donor’s name.
While Moore is best known locally for her donations to USC, her philanthropy extends throughout the state. In 2002, Moore donated $10 million to Clemson University. Next door to her home in Lake City, she established Moore Farms Botanical Garden, a 65-acre garden that hosts tours, school field trips and classes for both adults and children, according to the garden’s website.
Saturday was also the last day of the ArtFields festival, which Moore helped create in 2013.
In a span of 10 years, Moore had given $100 million to support her hometown, according to the New York Times.
Throughout Moore’s life, she has broken boundaries. She made her fortune as a financier at Rainwater Inc. in an era when women, particularly women from the rural South, were overlooked in the industry, she told WBTV in 2019.
Moore was also the first woman — alongside former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — to become a member of the Augusta National Golf Club and the first woman to be featured on the cover of Fortune magazine, according to The Augusta Chronicle.
This story was originally published May 1, 2021 at 1:42 PM.