Discover Statesville
Welcome to "Discover Statesville," the show that takes you on a captivating journey through the heart of one of North Carolina's most charming towns. Co-hosted by community advocates, Richard Griggs and Cindy Sutton, this weekly show brings you the pulse of Statesville, recording live at various spots throughout Statesville in partnership with Sow Media studios.
Join Richard and Cindy as they uncover the hidden gems and local treasures that make Statesville truly special. From the top-notch attractions and exciting events to the remarkable individuals who shape the community, "Discover Statesville" promises to leave no stone unturned.
Hungry for a culinary adventure? Tune in for their delightful restaurant reviews, where they'll guide you to the best places to eat in town. Whether you're a resident or a visitor, this podcast is your ultimate guide to all the things that make Statesville great.
You're invited to come along on this immersive journey, as "Discover Statesville" brings you closer to the heart of our vibrant town. Be prepared to be entertained, inspired, and enlightened each week, as Richard and Cindy share their passion for all things Statesville!
Discover Statesville
Preserving Statesville's Past: The Journey of the Historic Collection
Unlock the secrets of Statesville's past with Dr. Steve Hill and Stamey Holland as we explore the evolution of the Statesville Historical Collection! From its humble beginnings to becoming a treasure trove of local history, you'll learn how community support and passionate individuals like Mayor Costi Kutteh, Bill Stiles, the Gordon family, and Jim Wilson played pivotal roles. Discover the Holland Building's remarkable transformation into the collection's new home, and how it now safeguards treasured artifacts.
Get a behind-the-scenes look at the monumental effort it took to relocate such an extensive collection and the meticulous care involved in creating thematic displays and restoring antique fixtures. This episode celebrates the tireless work of volunteers and the community's unwavering commitment to keeping access to Statesville's history free for all. Join us in paying tribute to the vibrant history and promising future of the Statesville Historic Collection!
Never a fee for history. That's what my friend, dr Steve Hill says when you asked him to monetize his life's work. Let's tune in now to learn more.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Discover Statesville, the show that takes you on a captivating journey through the heart of one of North Carolina's most charming towns.
Speaker 3:Welcome back to Discover Statesville. Today we are joined with Stamey Holland and Steve Hill. We're going to talk about the Statesville Historical Collection and the exciting new location here in downtown Statesville. Welcome, gentlemen, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're so excited to have you here with us today.
Speaker 3:So, steve, I guess let's start with you and, if you can, just kind of give us the maybe brief history of the Statesville Historical Collection, kind of how you got into this and when you started and where it's gone from there.
Speaker 4:Okay, well, the Statesville Historical Collection, I guess, is about as old as I am, so it's not going to be brief. But the more recent history of the collection when I retired back in 2009, I went to our mayor, who just happened to be Mayor Kosti Kute even back then, and I said, kosti, I know it's hard to visualize this, but I think I have enough material for a local history museum dedicated to Statesville and Iredale County history. He said okay, and I said I would like to find a building somewhere in town where I can pull all it's been in storage for many years where I could pull it out and put it up on the walls and invite people to come in and look at it. So Costi said well, my friend Bill Stiles has an old building over across from Black Pontiac back then. It's Black GMC now, I guess, but it used to be the balloon factory where hot air balloons were made Said I think Bill will let you set up in there, and he did. He was very gracious and so for a year I set up my little display in there and I invited friends and family and whoever wanted to come in to look at the display. Well, after about a year that building sold.
Speaker 4:So again, costi went to Marin Tomlin and DSDC and talked to them about the old Army Navy store building there on South Center Street 212 South Center Street that had just been vacated. So they graciously allowed me to set up in there. And I was there for five or six years and it came up for sale. So I figured it's probably a good time to move. And then the Gordon family, another gracious family, came and said hey, come down and use our old furniture store, stay as long as you want. You can stay forever if you want to. And the Gordon family, the whole family, welcomed me. They helped me, they helped me move, helped me set up, they paid the utilities, they did it all and they were just so kind and I didn't think I would ever find another person or another family as loving and as thoughtful as the Gordon family. But I have.
Speaker 4:Then I ran into Stamey Stamey, a fellow named Jim Wilson. Jimmy Wilson was always coming into the collection. He would always ask me what's going to happen with all this stuff when you're gone? That's not a question you want to hear, is it? I would always say well, that's going to be up to Dr Poston. Dr Poston was always there with me every day. At the time he was like 95 to 100. I always said Dr Poston's in charge of that. When I'm gone, of course it would bring a good chuckle, especially from Dr Poston.
Speaker 4:Unfortunately, dr Poston passed around his 100th birthday and Jimmy came back in one day and said you know again, what are you going to do with this stuff? And I said well, it just so happened that my wife Penny and I we've just been to the lawyer's office and we did our will, and my will says that the Statesville historical collection will go to either the city of Statesville or the county of Iredell. Whichever one will take it and take care of it and use it. Well, jimmy said oh no, that ain't gonna happen. As Jimmy could say it. Uh, we're gonna to do better than that.
Speaker 4:And he said what if I provide some seed money and we find you a large location, large enough that you can get all of your collection? He said what's the largest thing you have? And I said well, the largest thing I have is the paddy wagon from the Stateful Police Department in 1961. He said all right. He said we got to find a building where you can get a paddy wagon from the Statesville Police Department in 1961. He said, all right, he said we got to find a building where you can get a paddy wagon and through the door, so, but he got the ball rolling.
Speaker 4:He went and visited, we talked about buildings and he said if you had your choice, what would be the best building in Statesville for a local history museum although I don't call it a museum and I said well gosh, the most historic property in Statesville is lot number 30, the Holland Building. It was the first business in town, it was the first house in town. It was Patrick Huey's Tavern. When Statesville was just a crossroads town even back in the 1700s just a crossroads town, even back in the 1700s. It was site of the largest hotel between probably Winston-Salem and, I don't know, atlanta at one time.
Speaker 4:I knew I liked that place A three-story—it burned down, though.
Speaker 1:I know, I know.
Speaker 4:All things happen for a reason, right, yeah, yeah, if it hadn't, I don't know what we'd be talking about. Yeah, so it was the center. It was literally the center of social activity in the States for many years. And then Stamey's great-grandfather, Charles Hall, charles Holland from Olin, north Carolina, came down. He bought the hotel and ran it until it burned down in 1918. And the Holland family has owned that property since, I guess, 1903, right?
Speaker 1:Always reinvesting in it too and making it something new.
Speaker 4:And they built the current building the Holland building that's there now that housed a huge department store, and then it housed a Woolworth department store and, most recently, westmoreland Antiques for many years, 20-some years, and now, if you haven't walked by or looked in the window, I encourage everybody to do that, because Stamey has literally turned it into a show place for downtown states.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have been very, very impressed with what you guys are doing there. And first I want to say, sammy, it's such a pleasure to bring that building back to all its glory and then give it the opportunity to house such an amazing collection, like what Dr Hill has made. His life's work is commendable and I personally want to thank you. As a business owner and someone who lives here in Statesville, I want to thank you for what you're doing and bringing this for Statesville. I think it's pretty amazing. Would you be willing to share a little bit of why the historic collection in the building and why you're making this personal investment to bring the building to where you're bringing it today? Would you be able to share that with our listeners?
Speaker 5:Well, like Steve said, jim Wilson sort of got the ball rolling on this and he came to me and said that he'd like to be able to put Steve in there and give him a permanent home. And I've always been interested in history and the Holland family's been here for a long time, a lot of it in Olin rather than Statesville, but still it's Statesville to me, yeah, yeah horse and buggy days.
Speaker 5:It was a little different though, but uh, anyway, the town's been good to my family and I've always hadn't spent much time over there. But you can't go into Steve's, you know, be around his collection and not just be fascinated with everything he's got.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, oh yeah.
Speaker 5:And I just thought, if I was ever going to do something for Statesville, this would probably be the best thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's a very cool thing. There's more happening with the building, though. Right, there's some plans for upstairs and maybe downstairs. Are there any things that you can share as the building as a whole, not just the main floor with historic collection? Is there going to be potential office space opportunity, or have you guys not decided all that yet?
Speaker 5:Probably going to be doing some office space on the second floor.
Speaker 1:We need it. I've been looking for 30 days for an office space and can't find one. We desperately need it.
Speaker 3:So with the new space, you know, I mean I obviously went in well at 212 and in the most recent space that you've been in, you know, with the new space, the larger space, are you able to kind of display everything that you have in the historical collection now?
Speaker 4:I'll be able to get most of the things that are displayable In the collection. There are a lot of things that you just don't want out in. First of all, the light, because light damages documents and it fades photographs and things like that. And also you don't want a lot of hands flipping through like historical documents. There's probably, oh gosh, tens of thousands of historical documents, tens of thousands of historical documents.
Speaker 3:There's probably a quarter of a million or half a million photo negatives that have not been looked at. It's like some.
Speaker 4:CIA stuff it really is. I mean, I'll never live long enough to look through all those negatives, Microfilm. They are from the Albert and Van Ammon Studio, back from the 1930s to the 1950s. Just about everybody in Statesville had their photos taken there, their portraits. During World War II the soldiers would, when they came back from basic training and got ready to go across the ocean to war, they would stop there and have their portraits taken in their uniforms. So we have all those and fortunately Ms Ammon very delicately wrote the names of every family on it. So we have all the names with all the photographs.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 4:And it's literally hundreds of thousands of negatives.
Speaker 3:Three pallets of negatives. Who started this charge Like? Who started collecting and preserving all these things? Was this something that you started or was it something you kind of took up the mantle from someone that had commissioned?
Speaker 4:it as a kid. I just loved my community and was fascinated with history. I had some great history teachers in school and at Mitchell College and I've always been a collector, starting with rocks and postage stamps, like most kids, and coins, and but by the time I started driving I started focusing on local history, like any documents and photographs and signs and just anything old related to my hometown that I love so much, and it just kind of grew from there. Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say you mentioned you when you retired and then moving forward from there, but maybe talk about what you retired from. You were an educator in our school systems and I think that's very important that you and your wife Penny both worked in the school system.
Speaker 3:She's my high school principal.
Speaker 1:Oh, is she? Yeah, so Richard grew up going to every one of your spaces, probably on his field trips and his children now.
Speaker 1:But tell us, because when you're talking about for someone listening to the podcast, when you're talking about each time you move this collection, I mean you're not talking about you loaded up the back of your trunk. I mean this is like you have stuff in tractor trailers, right? Like talk about the breadth of maybe even this move, um, and how large the, how large the collection is, um. And then I'd also like to touch on, like I I kicked off the show by saying never a fee for history, and you you've always told me that our community and the residents in our community have given you and trusted you with this, so you are not going to monetize or make money on on their history so I'd like to touch on that a little bit okay.
Speaker 4:well, I have so many people who come to me and say these are the treasured photographs from my family, um, I'm not going to be around much longer. Will you take them for me? And I've had so many people to come in and donate stuff and then die just a few months later. So I'm obligated to take care of all of these things, and I've always promised when people donated things that I would never make a profit off of this. This is definitely not a profit-making venture, trust me.
Speaker 1:Nobody's getting a big salary. Huh, Nobody's getting a big salary.
Speaker 4:Huh, Nobody's getting a salary. Yeah, and other than rent help that I've had over the years. That's the monetary part I've had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's protecting.
Speaker 4:And that's very appreciated, very much appreciated. But yeah, and I believe, and people say, why don't you charge to come in? I can't charge for our history. I mean, our history is so important. I don't want people to not come because they can't afford $5 or whatever. You would charge to come in, so it's going to be free. It's free and it's going to be free as long as I'm around and I hope after that, because that's the way it should be, because that's the way it should be If you want to pay and the tradeoff is it's not really a museum because I don't have the fancy slick signage and things like that. Inside. I have homemade things that have been done on a computer and taken to Walgreens and printed.
Speaker 1:I think they look pretty good. Give yourself some credit, they look pretty good.
Speaker 4:So it's not a museum and not everything's labeled like it needs to be. I need to spend about a year just going through and labeling all the photographs, but fortunately I have most of them categorized and labeled in my computer so I can go back and look and see what is what, and so never a fail. I can never charge people to come in, and the question before that was the breadth of the size of the collection.
Speaker 3:How much stuff. How much stuff do you have?
Speaker 1:Maybe like stay me like, what's the size of that floor, that first floor? I mean it's going to be full and Steve's not even sure everything can fit. I mean it's a very nice. How many square feet is?
Speaker 5:11,000.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how many square feet is it 11,000.
Speaker 4:Yeah, wow, most of the displayable stuff will be up there when I moved from the balloon factory. A family in North Iredell kindly donated the use of a tractor-trailer how many feet tractor-trailer units are and I filled it up and still had stuff in the basement storage buildings no big fancy moving company.
Speaker 4:But now everything is in the basement of the Holland building and it's a mess because we just kind of put it in there as quickly as we could. But as we pull things out and reset it we can clean everything up. Really nice and the upstairs is so beautiful. I feel a little bit guilty about putting some of that stuff up there. Some of it's kind of rough around the edges, but we're going to try to clean it up.
Speaker 3:So you will have, at least initially, have some things on display on the second floor as well. No, oh, no, okay, just the main floor, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:But the second floor is just as beautiful.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I've been up there.
Speaker 1:I'm confident in that. So when do you anticipate? You guys have been doing a lot of work in the building, or Stamey has, and GL Wilson has beautiful plans that I see there in the window. When do you anticipate? We won't hold you to it, but when will you be opening your doors again to the public?
Speaker 4:it. But like when? When will you be opening your doors again to the public? Stamy and and and uh, tom wilson and julian all the gl wilson team. They have been so good to make sure everything is done just right. I mean, they're not cutting corners on anything. If you stand outside and look in the front windows and see the beautiful uh in the in the window cases there, the beautiful lights. They could have replaced those with neon lights, but Stamey has gone the extra mile and gotten beautiful antique light fixtures that are really going to just set off the whole thing. Wilson, his genius as a designer and architect, has taken that space and created lots of wall space for photographs and it's going to be open and airy but yet it's going to be full eventually and things will be categorized. The little cubicles will have themes, like military theme. Here we're going to have a hot air balloon corner.
Speaker 1:I would have that for the hot air balloon capital of the east.
Speaker 4:Yeah, christy Darling and her team are working on that.
Speaker 1:Christy and Charles are amazing, aren't?
Speaker 4:they, yeah, they are Now is there going to be a section.
Speaker 1:Christine, charles, are amazing, aren't they? Yeah, they are. Now is there going to be a section? I mean, are we going to Stamey? Has your family been able to preserve a lot of the history of the building and stuff? Are we going to be able to kind of walk through the history of the Holland Building itself in the collections?
Speaker 5:I think Steve's got more than I do.
Speaker 4:Oh, we're going to. That's going to be the first thing that hits you in the face when you come in the history of the Holland Building, because it's so fascinating, sure yeah.
Speaker 4:It is such a great place. I was just telling Stamey outside here today, august well, this is August 29th, 106 years ago today three famous men walked into Stamey's grandfather's hotel. They had just come in from ashville. They were dusty from the ride and they went in and they got a drink of water or maybe something stronger, I don't know, because there was a bar in there. But uh, they um, they went to the candy. There's a candy shop, candy kitchen in there. They bought, they bought chocolate and they walked around the streets of Statesville eating chocolate bars. Those three men were Henry Ford, harvey Firestone and Thomas Edison. So when you walk into the Holland Building, you're standing on the building that replaced that building, standing on the building that replaced that building, but you can basically stand on the site of where three famous men stood and ate their chocolate bars before strolling around Statesville. So to me that's pretty and there's just all kinds of stories like that.
Speaker 4:I was telling Stamey. The first female barber in town cut hair in the barber shop there in the hotel. That was literally our first shopping center, the hotel we had, and I keep a running tally of all the businesses that have been in there. It's been a saloon. It's been a liquor store, it's been a general store, clothing store, hat shop, several grocery stores, barbershop, music studio, telegraph office, telephone office, restaurants. It was the closest thing we had to a hospital for many years. Lots of surgeries were done in there. Doctors would put ads in the paper and they would come from Winston-Salem and Charlotte and see their patients, ride the train in, see their patients and then ride back home at night. So, interestingly, just shortly after Henry Harvey and Tom Thomas Edison spent their time there at the hotel and bought their candy at the candy kitchen, the candy kitchen caught on fire and burned down the whole darn hotel. So they were some of the last customers Glad they moved on before that happened.
Speaker 1:And so all these great things that have been in the Holland building and I just you know I'll be remiss to not say and then the rest is history.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, and it's an opportunity.
Speaker 3:This is free history. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:So you're thinking beginning of 2025? I'm comfortable with that, maybe.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but, like I said, we won't hold you to it, but we're very excited to get in there and be able to see well, like Richard was asking, the whole collection. I mean where you've been previously. Not even half the collections fit right. So you may have rotated in some stuff, but I don't think anyone's seen everything that you've spent your life work.
Speaker 3:Well, the coolest part to me, I think, is like you touched on earlier. It's all so compelling and interesting. You might look and think maybe I don't have any interest in going in there, but you go in there and there's a whole lot more to this community than most people realize and there's something in there that you're going to find interesting.
Speaker 4:That's what I tell people. You'll find something in here that'll strike your interest, whether it's sports, ballooning, civil rights we have a civil rights section.
Speaker 1:More to come on that.
Speaker 3:It's really an amazing space. I can't wait to see what it looks like now that you get to pull more things out of your bag of tricks there.
Speaker 1:Well, steve, I personally I know I said thank you to Stamey, but your life's work is very impressive and I feel very blessed to call you my friend Well thank you.
Speaker 4:I consider it an honor to be your friend and Richard's friend.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 4:And I just I can't reiterate enough, friend, thank you, and I just I can't reiterate enough these things. Our history would be packed away in a warehouse if not for lots of people like you guys, who love their community. Stamey loves his community, all the others, I mean. There are lots of us out there, yeah, and it's always refreshing to know that there are people who love this community as much as we do.
Speaker 1:Right and to wrap up, because you kind of talked a little bit about your plans and your will and I hope you never go anywhere, but you have solidified that right.
Speaker 4:So the yeah, now the sorry city. I'm going to pull that back. I'm going to change my will. Now it will be. It will go to Preservation States, which is a nonprofit that Jimmy Wilson wanted to make sure that everything was set up and in place.
Speaker 1:And preserved.
Speaker 4:And poor Jimmy, he died shortly after that. He was such a dreamer. I mean, if it weren't for Jimmy, my dream was like maybe I can get this stuff out of storage someday. But Jimmy's dream was let's put it at the most visible, most historic place in town and let's let people see it. So he's a much—and Stamey's a big dreamer too. Between the dreams of those two guys, my dreams are just nothing.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, Jimmy Wilson, because I know you're smiling down on us and I know he's going to be super proud.
Speaker 4:I tell Stamey. I have to pinch myself every time I walk in the building to say is this true? It's like a dream and I don't know whether to laugh or cry and sometimes I do both, but it's very emotional.
Speaker 1:That's okay. Thank you, Stamey.
Speaker 3:Crazy to think how far it's come since you started. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:We can't wait to see it come to life and are so thankful for people like you, stamey, your family, the Holland family, the Wilson family, for loving our community so much and wanting to invest in it, reinvest in it and preserve it. It's important and we want to celebrate that so. State's historical collection. The address of the new collection, when it opens, is 117 South Center. Yeah, and you can come.
Speaker 1:You do have some stuff in the windows, you can see some drawings and some of the things that are happening, and it'll have regular hours when it opens.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we'll actually have extended hours. I think it's so important now to make sure, and I'm going to have to have some volunteers for that. I'm going to need some volunteers to help me staff and man the place.
Speaker 1:Meredith and our team had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with you. We had some summer interns this summer who were thrilled to hear everything you had to share. So not only did we record this podcast, but Meredith Collins has written an amazing story. Couldn't fit it all into one story, but a story about the collection and kind of how we a longer version of how Dr Hill got where we are today and the Holland family's involvement. So please, in the description section of this podcast, take a time to click on the link and read the whole story and, if you're interested, get involved. Like Steve just said, it's going to need volunteers to make all this happen and we appreciate you guys. We appreciate you being such a crucial part of I haven't said this in a long time, richard, but the patchwork, the patchwork that makes up our amazing home called Statesville, so the Statesville Historic Collection. We invite you to Discover Statesville everyone. Thank you Till next week.
Speaker 2:Thank you for joining Discover Statesville. You can email us at discover at statesvillenccom. Check us out on Facebook at Discover Statesville NC hashtag Discover Statesville and our website, statesvillenccom. Catch us next week as we continue on our journey to uncover the hidden gems, culinary adventures, entertainment, and to be inspired and enlightened as we Discover Statesville.
